Ouagadougou: The Center for the Quality of Law and Justice (CQDC) has been implementing the ‘access to justice for people in detention’ project since February 2024, which aims to facilitate the access to justice for residents of seven prisons in Burkina Faso, the AIB learned on Friday.
‘The ‘Access to justice for people in detention’ project aims to facilitate access to justice for people in detention in seven remand and correction centers in Burkina Faso, namely Banfora, Fada N’Gourma, Ouahigouya, Ouagadougou, Koudougou, Bobo Dioulasso and Kaya ,’ explained project manager Abel Kafando on Friday during an appropriation workshop in Ouagadougou.
According to Mr. Kafando, this 23-month project which began in February 2024, takes place in a context of overcrowding in penitentiary establishments with an occupancy rate of 160.1% or 8,369 inmates for a capacity of total reception of 5,228 people.
‘The most worrying occupancy rates are observed in the remand and correction centers of Koudougou, Banfora, Ouagadoug
ou, Fada N’Gourma, Kaya, Dédougou and Bobo-Dioulasso which have a total of 4,335 prisoners, ie 51.7% of the prison population,’ said Mr. Kafando.
For him, this overpopulation does not promote ideal conditions for the protection of prisoners.
Project manager Abel Kafando underlines that the CQDJ will initially involve intervening directly with the litigants who are the detainees, by providing them with legal assistance and legal assistance through legal clinics run by prison lawyers trained in the subject.
‘Secondly, it is the intervention on the judicial actors which will consist of working with the actors to diagnose the difficulties so that the challenges which are common to all can be met,’ added Mr. Kafando.
The representative of the Minister in charge of Justice, Geoffroy Yogo, continued that in addition to overcrowding, there are precarious detention conditions combined with the lack of knowledge by detainees of their fundamental rights, thus constituting obstacles to the effective protection of the
se rights.
For Mr. Yogo, the involvement of judicial and penitentiary actors in the frameworks of reflection and exchange will make it possible to identify the bottlenecks in the legal and judicial care of prisoners and to identify possible solutions. .
He continued that these solutions will be structuring not only for the benefit of prisoners but also will contribute to improving the quality of services provided by actors in the penal and penitentiary chain.
In his presentation of the project, Mr. Kafando added that the project will also consist of the organization of a workshop which will focus on the promotion of alternative measures to detention.
‘These alternative measures constitute a major axis of the penal policy desired by the Head of State, Captain Ibrahim Traoré,’ said Mr. Yogo.
He also returned to the interview of February 2, 2023 with Captain Ibrahim Traoré in which he wanted the sentences of people in prisons, except dangerous criminals, to be transformed into community service.
According
to the Minister’s representative, this initiative responds to strategic axes 1 and 2 of the ‘Justice and Human Rights’ sectoral policy.
‘This policy requires that by 2027, access to justice as a fundamental right enshrined in national and international legal instruments will be a reality for all litigants.
The Chairman of the Board of Directors Sosthène Sidwaya Ouédraogo recalled that the CDQJ’s mission is to make the law an instrument of social change and has been intervening since 2015 in the prison environment.
Source: Burkina Information Agency