The National Defender, Andrés Mahnke, expressed his interest in incorporating "the gender perspective which is an issue that concerns us and that we want to strengthen. Our responsibility is to work on the deficiencies and highlight the good practices"
In their first official activity, Paulina Hernández and Marcela Aedo, experts working on the Program for Social Cohesion in Latin America (EUROsociAL +), met with the National Defender, Andrés Mahnke, within the framework of the project entitled “Technical Assistance for the Design and Implementation of the Prison Defence Model for Women Prisoners in Chile”. This project is being implemented by this European cooperation organisation throughout the current year in collaboration with the Chilean Public Penal Defender.
The project’s main aim is to create opportunities so that women prisoners in Chile can access justice by exercising their rights through the intervention of the Public Penal Defender. The assistance of a public penal defender will allow these women to assert their rights before the judicial and administrative authorities, in order to obtain intra-penitentiary benefits under conditions of equality and ensuring the protection of their rights as mothers of nursing infants within the penal facilities.
The technical assistance that EUROsociAL+ will provide to the Chilean Public Defender’s Office is part of a cooperation project to design and implement a gender-sensitive prison defence model in accordance with the guarantees provided for in the Republic of Chile’s Political Constitution and in the international instruments ratified by the country. “The gender perspective is an issue that concerns us and that we want to strengthen. Our responsibility is to work on the deficiencies and highlight the good practices, with a view to the current debate that is taking place in the Inter-American Human Rights System”, explained the National Defender.
Andrés Mahnke added that “we are proud to be working for and on behalf of our women prisoners, the fact that we can in some measure alleviate their emotional, social and economic vulnerability is highly satisfying. Many of them are the head of their households living with the worry of caring for their children at a distance, this makes them doubly vulnerable when dealing with the justice system. We must never forget this”.
During the week, Hernández and Aedo will focus on identifying the needs and problems faced by convicted women in the Chilean criminal justice system. In order to achieve this, they will hold meetings with public penal defenders, representatives from the other institutions comprising the penal system and human rights representatives. Their programme of activities will also include meetings with women prisoners held in the Valparaíso, Santiago and Rancagua prisons.
“We consider that the Chilean prison penal defence model is advanced in relation to comparable international experience. Therefore, we must work to improve the visibility of women and we are convinced that the Public Defender’s Office will be able to do so with the discipline required to achieve equity in access to justice. In this first stage, we will gather information on good practices and critical nodes that will allow us to better focus our efforts to create the model that will be applied in Chile this year”, stated Marcela Aedo.
Defensoría Penal Pública de Chile / EUROsociAL+
