PPAZ LEAVING NO INMATE BEHIND

THE adoption of the 2030 Agenda gave birth to the United Nations Member States’ pledge to leave no one behind in their quest to implement the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and to endeavour to reach the furthest behind the first.

All people, regardless of their backgrounds, have rights and responsibilities to fulfill their potential in life, and lead decent, dignified and rewarding lives in a healthy environment.

In Zambia, like many other African countries, those often left behind are people living in poverty and other vulnerable situations, including children, youth, persons with disabilities, people living with HIV/AIDS, and older persons among others.

Zambia has laws that seek to preserve the dignity of inmates especially females and circumstantial children. However, this group of people continues to lag behind in as far as health, sanitation, nutrition, and education among other conditions, are concerned.

Section 56 of the Prisons Act has distinct provisions for female inmates with infants to be received into prison with the infants, and places an obligation on the state to supply the infants with clothing and other necessities, but this is not always the case.

A number of incarcerated women are of reproductive age (below 49 years), meaning they still need sanitary towels while all those on Antiretroviral and tuberculosis treatment need to balance their medication with good nutrition, nonetheless, their needs are not always met.

Besides other needs, Juveniles also require information on various aspects of life. They need counselling, education on sexual reproductive health (SRH) and life in general but it is not always provided.

In its quest to reach out to the marginalised groups, the Planned Parenthood Association of Zambia (PPAZ) has scaled up their support towards the wellbeing of inmates in line with the third SDG on health, national AIDS strategic framework, and the adolescent sexual reproductive health framework (2017-2021).

PPAZ executive director Nang’andu Kamwale says, “every human being has a right to health and we are trying to reach those people who are vulnerable because our mandate is to reach those that no one ever thinks about and inmates are marginalised people.”

Currently, PPAZ conducts outreach programmes in correctional facilities to create awareness on sexual reproductive health and also provide services to the inmates.

One unique intervention that the organisation has put in place is the training programme for young people as peer educators, who after being trained engage the juvenile inmates at Katombora correctional facility in Livingstone.

Kamwale says this programme is aimed at addressing the SRH information gap that juveniles are faced with.

“If we look at young people who are incarcerated, the minimum need that one can ever think of is information. They do not have anything that they can relate to, they do not have any information that tell them that now you are a grown person, this is what it means to grow up because they are behind bars.”

“Depending on when someone was jailed, they may not even have attained education and are unable to read so they depend on messages that go in there through outreach programmes and we are very much excited to see how our SRH programme is going to support that correctional facility in Livingstone,” says Kamwale.

PPAZ in collaboration with the UN Office on Drugs and Crime and other partners has embarked on a programme to re-integrate the released inmates into care.

The move is aimed at ensuring that there is continuum of care for SRH, HIV/AIDS, TB and any other health needs that the released inmates may require.

“Many are the times when inmates are released from prison, they find that their families have moved, they do not know where to go and they do not have information when they are inside the prisons as to where they can access certain services,” she says.

Kamwale further explains that PPAZ works in collaboration with authorities in correctional facilities to ensuring that the released inmates with medical need, including on antiretroviral therapy (ART) are linked to health care so that their adherence to medication is not disturbed.

“When correctional facilities give us information on who (inmates) will be released and when, we identify their needs and once they walk to freedom, we refer them to government facilities those needs that we cannot attend to because our niche is just to provide health services in SRH, HIV, and cancer screening,” she says.

Furthermore, with the funding from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, PPAZ has established a registration centre at its clinic in Lusaka aimed at creating a database of released inmates, their various needs, those attended to and the referrals.

In as much as the law must be firm with lawbreakers, inmates are entitled to human rights by virtue of being human. The conditions in the correctional facilities should be compatible with human life.

This is supported by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, the Basic Principles for the Treatment of Prisoners, and the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment which seek to protect the rights of inmates and to which Zambia subscribes to.