The COVID-19 pandemic has amplified humanitarian crises and posed significant challenges to human rights. According to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), nearly 11 million prisoners and other detainees are being held worldwide in often overcrowded and unsanitary conditions, without access to adequate health care and the ability to practice social distancing and proper hygiene. OHCHR has further warned that jails pose a real and present risk for both incarcerated individuals and for staff and that detention during the Covid-19 pandemic may become effectively a death sentence.
Understanding the conditions of confinement and how incarceration impacts a global public health crisis is essential to finding a solution, not only to upholding human rights and dignity during the pandemic, but also to finding alternatives to incarceration which still hold individuals accountable for harm.
Investing in restorative justice practices and implementing alternatives to incarceration such as more mental health facilities, drug treatment programs, and other social service interventions have proven to be sustainable alternatives which create healthier communities and families. This webinar will look at how criminal justice reform experts and faith leaders internationally are responding to the needs of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated individuals during the pandemic to address issues of human rights, overcrowding, reentry needs, reform efforts, and alternatives to incarceration.
Learn more about the Coalition of Faith-Based Organizations:
The Coalition of Faith-Based Organizations (FBO Coalition) is a broadly-based multi-faith coalition of leading representatives of the world’s great religious traditions, along with interfaith leaders, academics, and practitioners actively engaged in various areas of criminal justice and crime prevention. The FBO Coalition encourages responsible collaboration with various UN agencies, most notably the UNODC, the Inter-Agency Task Force on Religion and Sustainable Development, and ECOSOC. The FBO Coalition is working in partnership with the Vienna-based NGO Alliance for Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice.
https://coalitionfbo.com/2020/05/11/webinars/
Learn more about the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC):
For two decades, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has been helping make the world safer from drugs, organized crime, corruption and terrorism. We are committed to achieving health, security and justice for all by tackling these threats and promoting peace and sustainable well-being as deterrents to them.
https://www.unodc.org/
