Juvenile Code

This law came into force on March 23, 2005, the date of the Juvenile Code’s publication in the Official Gazette. The Juvenile Code of 2005 is Afghanistan’s first foundational code with protections for children in conflict with the law. It raises the age of criminal responsibility from 7 to 12 years. It also stipulates that a child is anyone under the age of 18. One of the central objectives is to encourage public welfare institutions and to bolster social services with the objective of preventing juvenile offences. Therefore, the Juvenile Code mandates the establishment of juvenile prosecutor offices across the country. By 2012, they were established in all 34 provinces.

The code also introduces many of the principles that are contained in the Convention on the Rights of the Child. However, there were serious challenges to the code’s implementation. As United Nations reports on the Juvenile Code in the following years have explained, a central challenge in implementing the code was a lack of “functioning juvenile justice institutions, with the exception of Kabul, and the virtually complete lack of social services in the community that are necessary to implement the non-custodial provisions of the Juvenile Code.”[1]

[1] For more information, see “Afghanistan: Implementing Alternatives to Imprisonment, in Line with International Standards and National Legislation,” United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, May 2008, https://www.unodc.org/pdf/criminal_justice/Afghanistan_Implementing_Alternatives_to_Imprisonment.pdf.