Juvenile Justice System | Juvenile Meaning | Child Rights in Nepal

Juvenile:-The term ‘juvenile’ is synonymously used to denote child, childish, babyish, immature, young, and adolescent. The Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2000 of India has defined the term ‘juvenile’ as a boy who has not attained the age of sixteen years or a girl who has not attained the age of eighteen years. This provision has categorized the age of boy and girl to identify juvenile. Further it is suitable regarding age for granting protection according to the social circumstances. The Children’s Act, 2048 has preferred to use the term ‘child’ instead of ‘juvenile’. The Act has defined the term ‘child’ as every human being below the age of sixteen years. Before providing juvenile justice as a fundamental right in the constitution, the term
juvenile has to be defined, because many Nepalese laws have not a standard of age of juvenile.

Juvenile Justice in Nepal | Juvenile Justice Act

Juvenile justice: – National and international mechanism is being developed day by day for dispensing proper justice. Justice for juvenile is a part and parcel of the whole justice system. Justice covers wide area. Justice encloses distributive justice and corrective justice. In the matter of juvenile both kinds of justice are required. Many international or regional organizations have been contributing for the juvenile justice by declaring and concluding international treaties, instruments and standards. Many countries of the globe are incorporating the international standards of juvenile justice in their constitutions as well as statutes. Consequently, we can say, the concern of children welfare has been strongly accepted at national and international level. In this milieu the rights to juvenile justice should be guaranteed as fundamental rights of children in constitutions of respective countries. So far as the perspective of Nepal is concerned, there is no child right provided by the constitution up to the Constitution of Kingdom of Nepal, 2047. However the Interim Constitution of Nepal, 2063 has guaranteed rights of children. The Interim Constitution has assured the rights of children but still there is lack of ‘juvenile justice as fundamental rights’.

The role of the Supreme Court of Nepal:-The role of judiciary is also important to strengthen the juvenile justice system. The Supreme Court has decided many cases for the protection of the best interest of child. The court has ordered to implement the Children’s Act properly and issued order to follow the provisions of the act as it is. The Supreme Court decided the children cases on the ground of Nepal ratified international human right conventions as well as national law. The Supreme Court of Nepal has been playing positive and constructive role in protecting the right and best interest of the juvenile. The Supreme Court has been playing outstanding role and exercising its ordinary and extra-ordinary jurisdiction for dispensing justice in cases related with juvenile. However, the right and interest of minor in conflict with law is being dishonored day to day despite the ruling of the Supreme Court.

Right to Juvenile Justice as Fundamental Right in New Constitution of Nepal

Laxmi Prasad Mainali has written this article in 2009. This article explains the juvenile justice as fundamental rights and gives complete idea about juvenile and juvenile justice. However it has not been extended to juvenile delinquency, principles of juvenile justice system, provisions of the Muluki Ain and institutional bodies of Nepal. Even though, author raised voices that juvenile justice right should be included in the new coming constitution as a fundamental right, which is appeared at the same time as an exclusively new dimension of juvenile justice system in Nepal. Also he identified what rights are available to children in present constitution and described national legal framework precisely.

Child Rights and Justice in Nepal

Criminal Law Subject Committee, T.U. has recently published a very comprehensive book about juvenile justice on the collaboration with Central Child Welfare Board. The title of the book is Children Rights and Justice in Nepal. This is a book of collection of various articles related to child rights, juvenile justice and child psychology and so on. There are twenty six articles written by various learned experts, specialists and resource person of their respective field. It provided researcher about the concept of child right, juvenile delinquency, juvenile justice system, institutional set up, domestic legal framework, and international instruments, rehabilitation and restorative justice for children, judicial trends as well as psychological and victim logical perspectives on juvenile matters. Though, it is a consolidated and specified relevant document for those who seeks complete package of knowledge and information about children justice. The book has not provided the separate concrete findings regarding juvenile justice system in Nepal in present day. Nevertheless, the all of the articles provided different conclusion and finding relevant to respective topic, these all are reviewed thoroughly and it assisted to grasp the core idea of very subject matter. The book has filled up a crucial gap in the understanding and practice, principles, regarding victim and witness protection issues and juvenile justice administration process in Nepal. It also helped in enhancing clarity and providing new dimensions to children justice system in Nepal.

Criminal Code, Criminal Procedure Code and Sentencing (Determination and Execution) Act, 2067

Proposed Criminal Code, Criminal Procedure Code and Sentencing (Determination and Execution) Act, 2067 are proposed codified law of Nepal. Honorable Judge of Supreme Court, Kalyan Shrestha with another member including Prof. Dr. Rajit Bhakta Pradhanga submitted their reports to government named on Criminal code, Criminal Procedure Code and Sentencing Act in 2067. It is one of the important codified laws relating to criminal law. It has not been promulgated yet. It requires implementing with some modification according to present day context. This code has exempted children below the age 10.
Beside above mentioned books and research articles I have reviewed many other books, publications, articles, journals etc, such as ‘Juvenile Justice System in India from welfare to rights’ by Ved Kumari. Researcher have reviewed ‘Juvenile Justice a Guide: Practice and Theory’ by Steven M. Cox etc. Similarly, I visited some websites to find out the international mechanism and historical module. In this link www.lawyersshop.com provided me a lot of information as regards the subject matter. Previous academic studies seminar papers and dissertations also helped me to make a skeleton of this paper.
The special quest of this study is to find out the recent judicial trend over the subject matter and to find out the necessity of juvenile court instead of juvenile bench.