Jordan Times
Tuesday, January 11, 2005
Jordanian law should comply with international standards — judges
AMMAN — Amendments need to be made to some articles of Jordanian law so they comply with the international human rights agreements, judges participating in a three-month programme conducted by the National Centre For Human Rights (NCHR) said.
The participants recommended some amendments to the personal status and crime prevention laws in order to protect the more vulnerable groups in society, especially women and children.
The amendments will be presented to lawmakers for approval, said Taleb Saqqaf, head of complaints and legal services, at the closing ceremony on Sunday. The crime prevention law needs to be totally updated to take into consideration human rights and freedoms and social development, according to the recommendations of the programme. “Some articles in the law need to be consistent with recent developments in our society, to serve the rights of women and children,” advocate Reem Abu Hassan said. According to Abu Hassan, the Crime Prevention Law gives absolute authority to governors to take action such as detention without legal grounds.
“The right to take someone into custody should be restricted to the justice system, not the governors,” she explained. The Lower House has twice rejected changes to the Personal Status Law on the grounds that they are “harmful to society.” The proposed amendments seek to protect women's rights by giving them the right to divorce and also by raising the legal age of marriage to 18. The programme, which concluded at the end of December, was titled “Strengthening the Justice System to Ensure the Observance of Human Rights and Protection of the Vulnerable Groups.” “Our target group were judges and prosecutors, because they are the natural guardians of human rights and freedoms in society... so training was focused on how to implement these standards in their daily work,” said Saqqaf.
The NCHR has also established a network of lawyers and judges to bolster the activities of the newly established centre in terms of advocacy and legal assistance, according to Saqqaf. “We also managed to survey the needs of judges in the field of human rights, which includes the need for more training programmes and reports on human rights violations in the country,” said Saqqaf. The initiative, funded by the UN Development Programme (UNDP), trained 109 judges covering the southern, central and northern regions of the Kingdom, acquainting them with the essential human rights agreements around the world, according to a NCHR statement.