PHNOM PENH (May 31, 2013) – LICADHO and its partner NGOs will mark International Children’s Day today by distributing food and materials to children and pregnant women in 14 of Cambodia’s prisons. The children of prison guards, who often live on or near prison grounds, will also receive gifts.

LICADHO has also organized special Children’s Day events at Correctional Center 2 (“CC2”), and provincial prisons in Kandal, Siem Reap, Koh Kong and Kampong Som. The events will include games, prizes and guest speakers who will discuss children’s issues.

International Children’s Day officially falls on June 1.

A total of 446 juvenile prisoners are incarcerated in the 14 prisons targeted for Children’s Day celebrations. That number is down from previous years, but that is largely due to the fact that the General Department of Prisons recently changed the way it defines juvenile prisoners. Previously, juveniles were defined as those who were between ages 14 and 17 when they committed their crime; they were continued to be classified as juvenile prisoners after they reached their 18th birthday in prison. Today, juvenile prisoners are reclassified as adults when they reach their 18th birthday.

Fourteen is the age of criminal responsibility in Cambodia.

The 14 prisons also house 15 pregnant women and 58 children living in prison with their mothers. Under recent legislation that took effect in December 2011, children are permitted to stay with their mothers in prison only until the age of three. The previous age limit was six.

Despite the law, the number of children living with their mothers in prison remains high. As recently as April 2011, only 36 children were held in 18 prisons monitored by LICADHO – though in May 2012, there were 81.

“Children typically go to prison with their mothers – or in a few instances, with their fathers – when they have no other family to care for them,” said LICADHO prison supervisor Nget Sokun. “Most are unable to stay with family members on the outside, and there are a limited number of caregiving organizations that can take care of them. That means that prison is the only option for many children.”

The LICADHO gift packs for children will contain fruits, drinks, toothpaste, toothbrushes, soap, laundry detergent and toys. A total of 919 packages will be distributed – 446 to juvenile prisoners, 15 to pregnant prisoners, 58 to children living with a parent in prison, and 400 to the children of prison officials.

With Cambodia’s prison overcrowding crisis already stretching prison budgets thin, children often bear the brunt of the system’s dysfunction. In many provincial prisons, for example, minor prisoners are integrated with the adult population. Food rations are inadequate and medical care is often non-existent.

The distributions will take place at the following prisons: Takhmao, CC2, Bantey Meanchey, Battambang, Kampong Chhnang, Pursat, Siem Reap, Svay Rieng, Kampong Thom, Kampong Cham, Kampong Som, Kampong Speu, Koh Kong and Kampot.

To learn more about the plight of children in prison, please LICADHO’s report, “A Review of the Conditions of Mothers, Pregnant Women and Young Children Living in Ten Cambodian Prisons” (June 2010), available at http://www.licadho-cambodia.org/reports.php?perm=141

For more information, please contact:
▪ Naly Pilorge, LICADHO Director, 012 803 650
▪ Nget Sokun, LICADHO Prison Project Supervisor, 016 797 305

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