Rights, from A Child’s Point of View

We, the children of Indonesia, ask the government to educate the community about children’s rights, including parents, teachers and children themselves,” said Tika, a high school student from Semarang. “We, the children of Indonesia, ask the government to provide our schools with better facilities and make sure education is truly free for all of us,” said Maxie, a student from Ambon, Maluku. These two young people bravely stood up last Tuesday in front of 100 adults and voiced their concerns about the state of children’s rights. They were speaking at an event to mark the release of a report by a coalition of NGOs on Indonesia’s progress in implementing the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The report was based on more than two years of consultations with 377 children in 14 provinces. “Indonesia ratified this convention 20 years ago, but there are still many laws that conflict with the convention,” said Ahmad Taufan Damanik, coordinator of the NGO Coalition for Child Rights Monitoring. “The protection of children and their rights is the responsibility of everyone in the community,” he said. While the report criticized Indonesia’s lax implementation of the convention, the event was in part a celebration of youth.

Held in Teater Kecil at Taman Ismail Marzuki in Cikini, Central Jakarta, the sunny atrium was a bright and vibrant reflection of Indonesian youth: A colorful mural of children, painted by children, encircled the entire room; high school students played a giant snakes-and-ladders board game that featured information on children’s rights; and a teenage boy worked on a painting depicting a child playing the guitar and singing his wishes. A photo exhibition was spread across the atrium, showing vignettes of the coalition’s consultation process with children, from Banda Aceh to Ambon to Jayapura. An audio station featured recordings of children telling their personal stories, while a comic book, “Petualangan Para Gembel” (“The Adventures of Street Kids”), was on display. “These are not just token gestures,” said Duncan Harvey, from Save the Children, which helped fund the report.

“This is real participation of children — children dictating what they wanted to go into this report, children really saying what was important to them, expressing their opinions and making sure that this report was really reflective of children in Indonesia,” Harvey said. He said the report was a milestone for the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in Indonesia. “It’s been 20 years since Indonesia became part of the global movement to fight for children’s rights, and this report is the first attempt to look at to what extent Indonesia has realized the rights of children in this country.” A film to accompany the report — directed by Setiawan Cahyo Nugroho, a program manager of child rights at Save the Children Indonesia — was screened, reminding the audience of the reason for the convention and of the vulnerability of children. The film featured harrowing stories of children in conflict with the law, children from indigenous and religious minority families and street children.

One boy in conflict with the law said that the police tortured him until he confessed to a crime. “Then they put me in jail with adults. On my first day, the guards said they had a welcome gift for me. The welcoming was that I had to fight with one of the men,” he said. The police then tried to extract a bribe from his parents to charge him with a less serious offense, he said. Another boy, who is a member of the Islamic minority sect Ahmadiyah, told of how he had to leave his school after being repeatedly beaten by bullies because of his religious beliefs. “They said that if they beat an Ahmadiyah kid during Ramadan, they would get extra brownie points,” he said.

Teachers told accounts of pregnant girls being expelled from school, while street kids explained how free education did not mean they could necessarily attend class. “My family is so poor, I can’t afford to not work,” said one boy who makes a living busking on the street. Setiawan said much abuse happens in part because of decentralization. “A lot of local laws conflict with national laws and the convention,” he said. “In Aceh, for example, it’s acceptable to use corporal punishment for children. The anti-porn law discriminates against girls, and it is enforced a lot more often in particular areas.”

The NGO Coalition for Child Rights Monitoring has made a number of recommendations in the report; perhaps the most pressing is to upgrade the current presidential decree to protect children to a comprehensive law. “If we want to see an improvement for children, we need to be on the same page,” Taufan of the coalition said. “We can’t have different ways of thinking. We need to take into consideration what the children want and need, and tackle the problem with their way of thinking.”


(2010-05-30/jakarta  globe )