Project profile — Canadian Support for Child Protection and Juvenile Justice Reform in Honduras - PRONIÑEZ

• Honduras (100.00%)

• Legal and judicial development:
Legal and judicial development (15130) (30.00%)
Human rights (15160) (70.00%)

• Gender equality (significant objective)
• Environmental sustainability (cross-cutting) (not targeted)
• Participatory development and good governance (principal objective)
• Trade development (not targeted)
• Biodiversity (not targeted)
• Climate change mitigation (not targeted)
• Climate Change Adaptation (not targeted)
• Urban issues (not targeted)
• Desertification (not targeted)
• Children's issues (significant objective)
• Youth Issues (significant objective)
• Indigenous Issues (not targeted)
• Disability (not targeted)
• ICT as a tool for development (not targeted)

The project aims to strengthen the capacity of the Honduran national child protection institute, DINAF, to develop an effective national framework that will better protect children and youth from violence, exploitation, abuse and discrimination. It will also enhance the protective environment of 870,000 boys, girls and adolescents in 35 municipalities of Honduras, by increasing the capacity and coordination of municipal actors involved in promoting, protecting and restoring the rights of children. Project activities include: (1) developing a national child protection normative framework; (2) developing an inter-institutional management scheme at the national level for the sound implementation of child-related public policies; (3) creating a national information system and community-based data collection plan to improve accountability and evidence-based policy-making; (4) preparing a specialized curriculum on criminal juvenile justice and train justice sector workers to support the implementation of the juvenile justice legal framework; (5) designing and implementing a restorative justice model, including community-based non-custodial rehabilitation programs and mechanisms to facilitate the reintegration of adolescent offenders; (6) articulating community and institutional responses and strengthening the national child protection institute's leadership at the local level to strengthen community violence prevention; (7) developing participations skills for boys, girls and adolescents to become agents of change in the municipal development process, including through participatory child-rights based local planning in the prioritized municipalities.

Expected results for this project include: (1) Improved gender-sensitive, rights-based child protection and juvenile justice systems in Honduras; (2) Strengthened implementation of gender-sensitive municipal child protection mechanisms and juvenile justice programs.

Results achieved as of December 2021 include: (1) Honduras approved the legal framework for the National Comprehensive System of the Children and Adolescents Rights Guarantees. Also, the country is in the process of approving the gender-sensitive public policies for children and adolescents; (2) The juvenile justice system has improved its response, oriented by a children’s rights and gender equality approach. They have done so by applying new models for the rehabilitation of youth in conflict with the law; (3) Public institutions at the local level increased their capacities to implement gender-sensitive child protection schemes and comprehensive juvenile justice programs in 37 municipalities; (4) The National Directorate for Children, Adolescents and Family (DINAF) strengthened its capacity to perform its role as the entity in charge of design, coordination and supervision of national policies for children and adolescents. It has done so training its officials in the six regional and central DINAF offices, obtaining approval of legislative decree 34-2021. This decree confirms its status, and has established 110 hotline that provides emotional support to children, adolescents and their families, and registers complaints in cases of violations of children’s rights; (5) Implemented gender-sensitive municipal mechanisms for child protection and juvenile justice, reporting 3,500 interventions related to child protection, providing services to about 20,000 children and adolescents, and implementing local networks to accompany alternative assisted freedom measures for rehabilitation of adolescents in conflict with the law; (6) Community organizations have developed their capacities, mechanisms and tools to promote and defend children’s rights by training 221 persons in mechanisms or factors of protection and resilience. They also trained as 178 community leaders in promotion, management and defence of children’s rights, among other actions; and (7) strengthened organization skills and leadership of 3,606 children and adolescents to build their gender-sensitive mobilization agendas.

• Proactive disclosure