In March 2019, the IIJ convened a Practitioners’ Notes – Focus Group Meeting under the auspices of the IIJ Juvenile Justice Initiative. The meeting brought together 38 practitioners and experts with deep experience with juvenile justice in a counterterrorism context. The participants included investigators, prosecutors, judges, defence attorneys, and corrections officials from Algeria, Australia, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Ghana, Jordan, Kenya, Kuwait, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Nigeria, North Macedonia, the Philippines, Senegal, Serbia, Tanzania, the United Kingdom and the United States.
During the three-day meeting, participants reviewed and provided input on the new IIJ Juvenile Justice Practitioners’ Notes – a set of sector-specific notes tailored for judges, prosecutors, investigators, defense counsel and corrections officers – which have been developed to support the operationalisation of the GCTF's Neuchâtel Memorandum on Good Practices for Juvenile Justice in a Counterterrorism Context. Once finalised, the IIJ Juvenile Justice Practitioners’ Notes will be compiled into a single resource document to assist states to operationalise the Neuchâtel Memorandum in national legislation and judicial procedures.
Meeting participants also made a substantive contribution to the development of a training curriculum based on the sector-specific Practitioners’ Notes. The IIJ will offer this training to practitioners mid-2019 until 2020.
For more information on this meeting or the IIJ Juvenile Justice Initiative, please contact Programme Manager Emerson Cachon.