in the absence of such documents before the start of legal proceedings. As a result, children are kept in prison with adults until a plea of juvenility is raised at the trial stage. Juvenile offenders are subjected to heinous torture by police who coerce them into providing damning confessions that eventually form the basis of convictions and death sentences. A study by Justice Project Pakistan in collaboration with Yale Law School, Allard K Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic discovered 58 cases of torture of juveniles out of a sample of 1,867 Medico-Legal Certificates (MLCs).28 Pakistan has also failed to provide children with legal assistance when they come in contact with the law despite it being right guaranteed under the JJSO. Panels of lawyers constituted by the provincial governments to fulfil the right remain ineffective due to a lack of budgetary allocation resulting in negligible remuneration.29 Based on UNICEF estimates, almost 89 percent of children charged with bailable offences are in prison primarily because of their inability to afford a lawyer.30 Lack of legal aid also means that juveniles are also less likely to raise juvenility pleas during investigation and trial, and therefore, fall outside the ambit of the JJSO. As discussed in this report, courts are extremely unlikely to admit pleas of juvenility raised during appeals or post-conviction reviews. This results in countless juvenile offenders being sentenced to death and executed. Despite the JJSO’s explicit obligation to establish separate juvenile courts in all provinces, not a single juvenile court exists in the country.31 The Government attempts to get around this obligation by notifying regular District and Sessions Judges, Additional District and Sessions Judges, Senior Civil Judges and Judicial Magistrates as special juvenile courts. Therefore, regular judges are empowered to act as juvenile judges alongside discharging their regular duties. However, judges notified as “Juvenile Judges” are hardly ever provided with additionally training to sensitize them on how to deal with juvenile offender in a manner consistent with human rights standards. Additionally, the designated courts do not abide by most safeguards provided under the JJSO – courts remain open to the public and cases for juveniles are heard alongside those for adults.32 Furthermore, juvenile judges are often overburdened resulting in a slow judicial processes which lead to juveniles being detained for even longer than adults. In spite of the provisions of the JJSO, no specialised detention facilities or borstal institutions have been established in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan. Punjab, the country’s most densely populated province, has only two borstal institutions whereas Sindh currently has four.33 Borstal institutions in both Punjab and Sindh operate in sub -par conditions and are run by prison administration of the two provinces who are untrained to handle juveniles in detention. "There is a huge gap between the text of JJSO and the way it is practiced because judges and police are not trained on it in their academies. Like any tool, it is useless if no one knows how to use it" - Valerie Khan 28 Justice Project Pakistan & Allard K. Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic, Abuse of Juveniles By The Faisalabad Police, 2-3, (June 2014) Available at https://www.law.yale.edu/system/files/documents/pdf/JPP_Abuse_of_Juveniles_Follow_Up_Report_053014.pdf 29 Society of the Protection of the Rights of Children (SPARC), Juvenile Justice http://www.sparcpk.org/2015/sopc2014/JJ_Final.pdf 30 Pakistan: Child Advocacy Groups Press for Reform of Justice System. IRIN News. Web. 2014. http://www.irinnews.orgwww.irinnews.org/report/26010/pakistan-child-advocacy-groups-press-for-reform-ofjustice-system 31 Supra note 26 32 Interview with IftikharMubarik, Plan International. Date: 25.11.2016 33 International Crisis Group, Reforming Pakistan’s Prison System, 18, (October 2011) 34 Supra note 29 17 DEATH ROW’S CHILDREN