A teenager accused of rape, Abraham peers through the rusty bars of his prison cell where he has languished for two months. His wide eyes and childlike manner belie his alleged crime.

“I don't like being the youngest,” the 14-year-old told IRIN. “Sometimes other prisoners make me do things I don't want to."

He said that when he first came he could not sleep at night. “Sometimes because I was frightened and sometimes because there was no space to lie down." He shares a cramped, dirty cell with eight other minors accused of similar crimes. At night they fight over the cell's single foam mattress.

The children have no mosquito nets and lack proper sanitation.

Also lacking is due process. Abraham, like all but one of the prison's 28 juvenile inmates detained in Monrovia Central Prison, Liberia's most overcrowded jail, has not yet been tried.

Most of the children have never seen a judge specialising in crimes committed by minors.

A system in tatters

Four years after the end of Liberia's brutal 14-year war, the juvenile justice system is barely functional. Its problems mirror the breakdown of the judicial system as a whole, which the UN says is one of the major threats to the stability of the country.

“Until the army and police can stand on their own and the justice system is rehabilitated and accessible to all Liberians, the country will remain vulnerable to the risk of a return to lawlessness,” the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said in an 8 August report. The report called the state of the juvenile justice system “a source of deep concern.”

The head of the UN Mission in Liberia (UNMIL), Alan Doss, recently said that strengthening the judicial system will be one of the most important requirements for a sustainable peace in Liberia as the mission eventually draws down.

Legal experts say rebuilding the juvenile justice system will be a daunting challenge.

"Juvenile justice in Liberia is only just beginning to be addressed,” said Kitty van Gagnide, child protection officer with UNMIL’s human rights division.

Monrovia Central Prison houses 661 inmates, more than five times its intended capacity. While children have separate cells, they must interact with adult offenders during exercise and meal times and in bathrooms.

In rural areas the situation is worse, van Gagnide said. “Sometimes juveniles are separated from adults only by a bench or makeshift wall.”

In February a 14-year-old boy held at Sanniquelle Prison in Nimba County told UN officials that he was given drugs and alcohol and made to work for adult detainees with whom he shared a cell.

Strong law, on paper

Liberian law includes a ‘juvenile procedural code', which provides what legal experts say is a solid foundation for the development of a fully-functional juvenile judicial system. "[The code] is actually better than in many other West African countries,” UNMIL’s van Gagnide said.

“The problem is that it is rarely followed.”

UNMIL’s human rights division is training magistrates, court staff and police on juvenile law chapter by chapter.

"The majority of magistrates don't have much grasp of juvenile law," van Gagnide said. Under the code, juveniles awaiting trial should not be considered under arrest and incarceration should be considered a protective measure to prevent further delinquency until guardians can be contacted.

Magistrates are often unaware that many juvenile offenders should not be in prison, van Gagnide said, although one of the consequences of war is that a lot of youth do not have parents or legal guardians.

Another issue is that juvenile courts in Liberia ought to have exclusive jurisdiction for under-18-year-olds but with only one operational juvenile court in the country, county magistrate courts often take over.

“They too are under-resourced," Anthony Valcke, Country Director of American Bar Association (ABA) Africa, told IRIN. "And if children are tried in magistrates’ courts a whole new set of problems [is] brought to the table."

The problems, he explained, range from lost documents to wrongful bail demands to sexual abuse by authorities.

Earlier this year, a magistrate in the rural town of Zorzor was investigated for extorting sexual favours from a teenage girl in his court on charges of stealing a mobile phone.

Competing judicial systems

Luther Sumo, a protection lawyer with the International Rescue Committee, said there is a rift between statutory law and customary law with regard to the treatment of juveniles. And many children whose cases are dealt with in magistrates’ courts do not have birth certificates. As a result it is not uncommon for judges to treat children as adults.

ABA is now working with UNICEF to identify, track and monitor the progress of youth in prisons. Top on their agenda is the establishment of rehabilitation programmes in lieu of detention.

"Nobody knows how many of the children in Liberia's prisons are innocent. Detaining them because of a slow justice system is counter-productive and actually increases the likelihood of them offending upon release." UNMIL’s van Gagnide said.

While there are no formal rehabilitation homes in Liberia, facilities such as Monrovia's Don Bosco Children's Centre serve as a stop-gap measure in cases of less serious juvenile crimes such as theft, although it does not cater for youths charged with rape or murder.

UNMIL and the US government are backing the construction of a new adult wing at Monrovia Central Prison, which will make room for more juvenile cells. Hopes are also resting on the new UN deputy envoy to Liberia, Henrietta Mensa-Bonsu, who has considerable experience with juvenile justice in Ghana.

But meanwhile children like Abraham just wait. "I already feel like I've been here a long, long time" he says, tugging impatiently at the bars.