Child trafficking on the agenda for regional meeting

Child trafficking on the agenda for regional meeting

Evi Mariani, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

In 1995 a young Balinese girl, Luh Wati, 10, was taken by a man
called Pak Sadem to some foreign tourists who were visiting the
resort island.

She had to do everything the foreigners asked her, for which
she was paid. But Sadem took almost all of her money.

Afterward she learned that Sadem, a man she had trusted,
supplied children from villages to pedophiles, mostly foreigners.

She later lived with a Japanese man in his country, but soon
returned home because she could not stand the way he treated her.

"The villagers told me that I looked skinny and pathetic. I
was dumped by the Japanese," she said.

Starting from when she was 14 she supplied children to
pedophiles for two years, before she met an Australian man and
moved in with him.

Wati is only one of thousands of Indonesian children who have
been trafficked outside of their hometowns to be exploited as sex
workers.

According to data from the Office of the State Minister for
Women's Empowerment, in 2001 some 30 percent of 148,500 sex
workers in Indonesia were children under the age of 18.

Many activists say this figure may be just the tip of the
iceberg, as it does not include children likes Wati, who are
exploited away from the eyes of everybody.

Child trafficking has become a global concern. A United
Nations report estimates that in the past decade 30 million girls
have been trafficked annually, with the profits from child
trafficking reaching some US$7 million each year.

The Jakarta office of the United Nations Children's Fund
(Unicef) reported that in 2000 there were some 40,000 to 70,000
children under the age of 18 in the country who were victims of
sexual exploitation or forced labor, including beggars, drug
dealers and workers on deep-sea fishing structures.

A number of these children were trafficked abroad to places
such as Malaysia, Singapore, Australia and Taiwan to work as
prostitutes.

Indonesia endorsed a child protection law last year, allowing
those trading and trafficking children to be charged under the
Criminal Code.

However, Article 297 of the Criminal Code imposes a maximum
sentence of only six years in jail for those found guilty of
trafficking women and children, despite the seriousness of the
crime.

Additionally, some critics of the law say that parents who
sell or exploit their children are likely to escape punishment,
because in the eyes of the law people under the age of 21 are
still in the custody of their parents.

The authorities once freed several children who had been
forced by a pimp to work as prostitutes. But when the parents of
one child resold her to the pimp, the government was helpless to
punish them because she was in their custody.

Commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC) and
trafficking is one of the more urgent issues to be addressed
during the Sixth East Asia and the Pacific Ministerial
Consultation meeting to be held from May 5 to May 7 in Nusa Dua,
Bali.

Representatives from at least 23 countries in the region are
expected to attend the meeting. In a press release, Unicef said
the meeting was important because it would lay down plans for
children in the region for the coming decade.

President Megawati Soekarnoputri is scheduled to open the
meeting.

Indonesia's delegation will be led by Minister of Health
Achmad Sujudi, and will include State Minister for Women's
Empowerment Sri Rejeki Sumaryoto and representatives from the
ministries of health, religious affairs, social affairs, national
education, manpower and transmigration, and justice and human
rights, as well as legislators and children delegates.

The outcome of the meeting will form the basis for Unicef's
efforts throughout the region, including Indonesia.

Arist Merdeka Sirait, the secretary-general of the National
Commission for Child Protection, suggested that the government
push other countries to ratify Convention No. 182 on the worst
forms of child labor to show their commitment to eradicating
child trafficking.

"Indonesia has ratified it, but because trafficking is a
borderless activity regional understanding as well as
multilateral and bilateral agreements are needed," he said.

He said he would skip the Bali meeting to show his
disappointment with the government's decision not to include
children's groups in the process of drafting the country report
to be presented at the conference.

"They did not involve us, the organizations that deal with
children," he said. "I doubt that the report will give a true
description of the lives of Indonesian children."

Besides CSEC and trafficking, the meeting also will discuss
malnutrition, maternal and neonatal mortality rates, and HIV/AIDS
among children.

Minister of Health Sujudi underlined the importance of the
topics for Indonesia.

"All four topics are urgent, especially the issue of
trafficking since Indonesia has been reported not only as a
trafficking destination but also as a country supplying
children," he said.