A Story from the Field

Ms. Servidio, coordinator of UNICRI project in Mozambique

I: Ms. Servidio, can you tell us your experience in Mozambique?

S.: At the end of 2005 I went to Maputo on a mission to review the Juvenile Justice System and to give support in building structures for the admission and treatment of minors in conflict and to safeguard their rights. Before Unicri’s involvement, a Penal Section of the Juvenile Court didn’t exist.

During this first phase of the project it had been essential to develop the role of Unicri as intermediary, reinforcing the communication with the government and with the partners and establishing a network with the other local institutions. On a pragmatic level and in cooperation with Ministry of Justice, Home Office that is the Police, Social Ministry, Public prosecutor’s Office and the Juvenile Court, this aim took the shape of a Laboratory of ideas where the delegates of each institution could meet each other periodically to confront each other and to develop ideas and tools with an intercultural view that I consider an essential condition to build every modern and safe juvenile justice system: these synergies (Thanks to the creation of these local partnerships) permitted us to get to the second step, that was strictly dedicated to the reconstruction of “public opinion”, to their consciousness raising toward minors.

This restructuring, as a consequence of a change on the institutions’ perspective, has become one of the main premises to provide structures helping minors in conflict with the law; as a matter of fact, just thanks to the Unicri job, Juvenile Justice has been transformed into one of the main priorities of the government of Mozambique and this has led to the importance of the institutions being realized at a local level. I believe this change is the most significant because this shift in the perception of minors’ rights has helped to raise, thanks to the government of Mozambique, the awareness of people: otherwise it would be a personal fight.

I: What have you learnt from this experience?

S.: The experts themselves are among the beneficiaries because they come from another country and they find themselves confronted with a great cultural richness. The so-called experts, in fact, are faced with a difference that is a value and a knowledge at the same time, inside a reciprocity that it is, by the way, the real richness, both for those who create the project and those who will benefit from it. For example, here at Maputo I have the chance to meet local intellectual and top-level artists, and this means for me the opportunity to grow, to share a diversity where there isn’t the occidental expert that “lays the foundations of knowledge” or imposes his knowledge on the others, but rather he is an individual that, (cap in hand), gets involved with the host Country. Trying to reset our point of departure to zero means understanding more honestly the local reality and his needs. I consider it a great privilege to have this possibility to listen, even if it obviously presents some difficulties linked to the intercultural complexity: for this reason, on our behalf, it remains a permanent commitment to try to understand the country, seeking mediation for each problem. However it doesn’t imply giving up acting as representatives of a diversity, which is always meant as a richness (“other possibility”) and never as a pretension of a better opinion: it’s an encounter between two cultures where the balance comes really from the reciprocity.

This common feeling recalls to me, in some ways, the efforts that we have used for the construction of the Observation Center for minors seeking justice: we managed to obtain a very nice location, near to the seaside, initially destined for tourists; originally this center, was built to help Street children, but we have considered it a good opportunity to share their lifetime and their educational projects with the other children that have had problems with the law: we believe that Juvenile Justice shall take care of pedagogical paths, including socializing times.

Both the categories represent minors that have been or are “victims” of a system that has to be improved: in this case, we have realized that the mutual sharing among these children would be useful to help them to grow up and to confront themselves with different realities.

I: How can you assess the effectiveness of your project? Can you make an example of it?

S.: I think that the protection of the minors’ rights can be promoted through the changes of the environmental contexts. For example, in Huléne (a Maputo district) we are engaged in the building of a service network for minors in conflict with the law; in the middle of this process, rises the Help Desk, a structure with the ability to provide information and advice for children, families, policemen, local authorities and social operators, about rights of minors in conflict with the law. For example, some weeks ago, following a dispute between a mother and her 15 years old son (who is therefore not legally punishable), the mother had suffered a minor injury and the father brought the son to the police station because he considered him guilty, the police turned to our operators of the Help Desk for assistance In that case, our social workers tried to understand, from the start, which level of intervention was possible for that family and then, afterwards, created a dialogue among the family’s members. Subsequently, when the tensions were reduced, the Help Desk put the case into the hands of the appropriate Communitarian Court to which it concerned (these courts are recognized by the government and “they act on little events against law”); this court, together with the principles of Help Desk, didn’t consider it necessary, for that boy, to serve time in a rehabilitative institution, but it suggested a sort of “moral compensation” by the son for what he did to his mother. So, I believe that this event could be thought as a good example of the efficacy and effectiveness of these structures, of the necessity of a mutual support and communication among institutions that work with young offenders and with their families.

The most satisfying part of our work is, and has been, realizing that, after our local interventions, civil society, institutions and police have somehow changed their approach towards minors in conflict with the law.

At the beginning, they spoke about punishing mechanism for lawbreaking minors, but now, nobody uses these words anymore…the juvenile distress is now placed inside a juridical and social process oriented towards recovery and social integration; this path uses words differently on a qualitative level in comparison with the past words: now we can mainly speak about educational projects, minors’ rights, growth and the hopes of these young people and of their future. This means recognizing a different reality, made of minors that have different needs and dreams compared to the adults. In this sense, I think that Unicri has offered these young people some alternative building blocks and these symbolize the possibility to lay the foundation for hope in a possible future, for these guys in particular and for Mozambique more broadly.

If I had to summarize our work and human experience in one sentence, I would say “All the initial nos have turn into yes”, this was our heritage and this will be our wish for Mozambique.