2024-08-15 12:01:43
Minors in Guinea are held for several years without trial, in prisons where meals are poor in quantity and quality, says the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in a report published on Wednesday.
Minors make up about 4.96% of prisoners in Guinea where prisons are “overcrowded”, says this report entitled: “Don’t forget us”. This title accepts the “main message” of the children in the prisons visited in the country, which have been run by soldiers for almost three years.
Children “can be detained for a number of years before being judged and the pre-trial detention period is two months in correctional matters and four months in criminal matters”, the report underlines.
The document points to the “almost systematic use” of pre-trial detention of minors, “non-application, in most cases, of measures other than detention, lack of legal assistance and reception and re-education centers” for children. in prison.
Some minors attended school before being detained but “in the pen centers visited, there is no system to encourage their schooling”.
In addition, the infirmaries in these prisons are not often “equipped with medicines” and the meals served there were, “in almost all cases”, “insufficient in quantity and of poor quality”.
The High Commission says it has documented “conditions of child detention that are contrary to international standards”, which Conakry is a signatory to.
To produce this report, he said that, between March 2023 and June 2024, he made 15 visits to prisons and spoke in particular to judicial authorities.
The Guinean government should “demonstrate greater efforts and unrelenting political will” to “remove the widespread use of pre-trial detention of minors which in most cases results in illegal and arbitrary detention,” the report said.
The junta in Guinea overthrew civilian President Alpha Condé in September 2021, who had been in power for over ten years. She said she would break a pledge, initially made under international pressure, to end civilian rule by the end of 2024.
By AFP
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