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.