Child Justice ForumZAMBIA
Three pillars driving the transformation of child justice administration across Zambia.
The Diversion Programme is at the core of the CJF’s interventions for children in conflict with the law. Officially launched in December 2018 by the Ministry of Community Development and Social Services, with support from UNICEF, it provides alternative justice pathways for children away from formal court processes.
Instead of passing children through the formal criminal justice system, with prosecution and trial, diversion directs them toward community based rehabilitation, family reintegration and restorative justice interventions. This approach helps protect children from the long term negative consequences of criminal records and incarceration.
Within this pillar, the Child Victims & Witnesses (CVW) operate as an entry point mechanism that mirrors and supports the diversion referral pathways. CVW provides immediate, structured support at the earliest point of contact with law enforcement — a critical stage when children are most vulnerable. Trained personnel receive children taken into custody, assess their circumstances and link them to the most appropriate services, including legal aid, social welfare support or diversion options, before formal charges or detention are pursued.
Key components include:
The CJF works to promote child-friendly justice by ensuring that justice environments, procedures and professional conduct are adapted to protect the dignity, welfare and rights of children at every stage of the process. By making justice spaces and processes more responsive to children’s needs, child-friendly justice reduces the trauma associated with contact with formal institutions.
This includes designing and using spaces that are less intimidating for children, applying child sensitive questioning and evidence taking procedures, avoiding unnecessary delays in proceedings, and equipping justice professionals with skills for child appropriate communication and decision making.
The CJF works to strengthen protection, support and access to justice for child victims and witnesses at every stage of the justice process. This pillar focuses on ensuring that children who have experienced abuse, violence or exploitation, or who are required to testify in proceedings, are treated with dignity, sensitivity and care, while their rights, safety and best interests are protected.
This includes promoting child sensitive interviewing and evidence giving procedures, psychosocial support, appropriate referral pathways, legal and social welfare assistance, and coordination among justice and child protection actors. The pillar also seeks to reduce re traumatisation by encouraging practices and environments that are responsive to children’s age, maturity and vulnerability.
Key components include:
The CJF works to mobilise financial, technical and in kind resources, as well as strategic partnerships, to strengthen child justice interventions across Zambia, including for children held in transit and correctional centres, and places of safety. This includes coordinating funding, donations, volunteer services, educational and rehabilitation programmes, and advocacy efforts aimed at improving conditions and outcomes for children in transit and correctional centres and in contact with the justice system more broadly. Key partners such as UNICEF, Save the Children, Advocacy for Child Justice, Kids Alive Zambia, CIDRZ etc and have provided essential financial and technical support to sustain and scale CJF’s resource mobilisation and partnership activities.
Partners including UNICEF, and Save The Children have all provided financial and technical support for CJF resource mobilisation activities.
Help us expand child justice reform across all districts of Zambia.