Peru: Justicia Viva
Justicia Viva is a joint project developed between the Instituto de Defensa Legal (IDL) and the Department and College of Law of the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (PUCP) that allows an independent party of the civil society to work and contribute to the reform of the Peruvian Legal System in order to achieve a truly independent justice, impartial and protective of Human Rights.
Part of the work strategy is to develop a series of projects which focus on:
- The production and diffusion of information about the reformation and the effectiveness of the legal system;
- The formulation of possible plans for legal improvements; and
- Promoting citizen involvement in these reforms.
The main work topics are: judicial career, access to justice, the reform of the penal system, anticorruption in the judicial system, human rights in the judicial system, strengthening the government and administration of the legal system and taking part in these reforms, amongst other measures. Simultaneously, Justicia Viva takes part in campaigns and activities that involve different government institutions (the Ombudsman, ministries, parliament work groups, judges, the police, local authorities, etc.), the civil society (Lawyers Colleges, Universities, NGO’s) and many local organizations scattered throughout the country.
Specifically, it’s in the work with the “peace justice” (“justicia de paz”) or “community justice” (“justicia comunitaria”), both within the access to justice area, where one can find a strong influence of restorative justice. The “jueces de paz” (“peace judges”) are people without legal education that are elected by their own communities because of their strong moral authority to be in charge of the general administration of justice, including some minor penal processes, and to use conciliation as their main tool for resolving conflicts. Our project has an influential position in the education of these judges, which is focused in the diffusion of human rights and gender topics in order to prevent their violation through the decisions of the “peace judges”. Besides these measures, we encourage the administration to take part in projects that try to improve the work of the “peace justice”.
It is a shame that in Perú, with the exception of the “peace justice”, the idea of restorative justice has not been applied to penal processes. Historically, the problem of a deficient, slow, corrupt and unpredictable legal system has led to reform efforts that focus primarily on these issues and neglect others such as restorative justice. Nevertheless, since the transition process that started after the fall of the Fujimori regime and the installation of the Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación (CVR) —The Commission for the Truth and the Reconciliation (2001)— there has been a constant effort to give the victim a more active role in the process, especially in crimes against humanity investigated by the CVR. With this in mind, the new Penal Process Code was published in 2003 and has been slowly implemented since then. At the same time, judges and prosecutors are being instructed to realize the importance of the victim as an active part of penal processes. Even so, much more effort must be made on these issues.