Child participation in law-making process beneficial: Unicef
Child participation in law-making process beneficial: Unicef
Debbie A. Lubis, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The government and legislators need to involve children and young
people in the implementation of the law on child protection since
they may give concrete and practical suggestions that are needed
to improve the law's implementation, a Unicef representative has
said.
Steven Allen, United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef)
representative to Indonesia, said on Friday that the
participation of children who are most at risk -- those who are
victims of commercial sexual exploitation and street children --
was needed in drafting the implementation regulations of the law.
"These are the things which affect tens of hundreds of
children in Indonesia on a daily basis. If we can see the
concrete examples that children can give in their participation,
it will enrich any decision made and benefit the implementation
(of the law on child protection) in the community," he said.
Allen was speaking on the sidelines of the launching of a
report on the State of the World's Children with the theme: Child
Participation, which provides an overview of children as active,
creative participants in their world in all phases of their life
cycle.
The report was launched by the Coordinating Minister for
People's Welfare.
"The report is a global report but we believe the message is
relevant to the situation in Indonesia. And certainly all
children in Indonesia are more than capable of looking at the
issues covered by the child protection law," Allen said.
Just recently, Unicef Indonesia held workshops on violence
among street children and the problem of commercial sexual
exploitation of children in Jakarta, Central Java, and North
Sumatra, involving some 60 children under 18 years of age who are
living in those situations.
"They are speaking about their own reality. Those children are
acting as our main informant. They told us about what they have
experienced, and what forced them into those situations," Allen
said.
Allen added that children participating in those workshops
also gave some inputs about the forms of questions that could
generate concrete answers if a research was conducted among
children like them.
"The result shows that true direct participation of children
has enabled the workshop and research to become much more
effective and focused than involving adults' frameworks," he
said.
Allen hoped that the government and legislators put children
as their priority in developing regulations and decrees to
implement the child protection law.
"Children should be very much informed about all things which
concern their lives, obviously in accordance with their age and
maturity.
"The older they are, the more they deal with complex and
demanding issues, key articles in the child protection law, such
as articles dealing with exploitative child labor," he said.
Meanwhile, Jusuf Kalla said that the government would not
involve children in the conflict-torn areas in the discussion of
the conflict settlement.
"Children do not have any conflicts. We just invite adults of
the warring parties and major organizations to deal with the
problems," he said.