Enhancing legal aid for minors from grassroots mediation

In that context, grassroots mediation for minors who violate the law is increasingly being regarded as an “early line of defense” of the justice system, where the right of children to legal aid is concretized through specific procedures, skills, and personnel.

In recent years, the Party and the State have paid considerable attention to the protection, care, and education of children, while emphasizing the requirement to build a friendly and humane justice system for minors. National strategies and programs on children, judicial reform, and dissemination and education of law all place children at the center. However, awareness and policy documents alone are not sufficient; the key point is that these guidelines and regulations must be effectively “translated into practice” down to villages and residential groups, where most initial conflicts, disputes, and violations involving children take place.

Grassroots mediation is one of the tools to achieve that objective. Unlike formal judicial procedures, mediation allows many cases involving minors to be handled through a flexible and approachable approach, based on dialogue, understanding, and consensus among the parties under the guidance of a mediator. If well organized, cases such as minor conflicts, minor property infringements, non-serious bodily harm, infringements of honor and dignity, school violence, and similar matters can be appropriately resolved within the community, without pushing children into the vortex of judicial proceedings with numerous psychological consequences.

However, practice also shows a number of limitations: some mediators regard mediation merely as a form of “negotiation to smooth things over”; they have not been equipped with legal knowledge related to minors; and they lack skills to identify which cases are eligible for mediation and which must be referred to competent authorities. A segment of grassroots officials has not fully recognized the value of child-friendly mediation, resulting in missed opportunities for timely diversion, allowing cases to become prolonged and more complex.

For that reason, thematic training courses on “Guidelines on grassroots mediation procedures for minors who violate the law” that have recently been implemented in many localities are of particular relevance. Rather than stopping at the dissemination of documents, these training programs focus on “hands-on guidance”: providing instruction on how to correctly identify eligible subjects and conditions for mediation; how to prepare a child-friendly mediation session; how to listen to children and create a safe space for them to speak truthfully and express their emotions; and how to work with parents and guardians - those who are both sources of support and, at times, sources of pressure on children.

A notable point is that these programs are closely linked to the philosophy of restorative justice. In this context, mediators do not merely “smooth things over,” but help children clearly identify their wrongful acts, understand the consequences, listen to the feelings of victims, and thereby proactively apologize, provide compensation, and remedy the harm. Victims are able to share, to be heard, and to participate in decisions on remedial measures. The community is mobilized to support supervision and accompany the process of making amends. The right of children to legal aid therefore ceases to be an abstract concept and instead becomes a concrete and continuous chain of support.

Strengthening child-friendly grassroots mediation also helps reduce the workload of judicial authorities, especially in a context where judicial resources remain limited. Cases that have been successfully mediated and well supervised are less likely to recur, saving social costs and reducing tension within the community. More importantly, mediation helps preserve family, neighborhood, and school ties - the immediate living environment of children.

However, for grassroots mediation to truly become the “front line” of legal aid for minors, a coordinated approach is required: local authorities must treat this as a priority task; allocate and consolidate a team of mediators with adequate capacity and credibility; create conditions for them to receive regular training and capacity building; and strengthen coordination among judicial bodies, the police, mass organizations, and schools in identifying and supporting children at risk of offending. Only then will commitments to children’s rights and to a child-friendly justice system truly reach the everyday lives of each child and each family.