Govt neglects child abuse, Seto says
Eva C. Komandjaja, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The government's decision to omit from its UN report, allegations of child abuse during the May 1998 upheavals and the ongoing war in Aceh smacks of defiance and misrepresentation, according to a National Commission for Children's Protection (Komnas PA) member.
Government representatives will present a periodic report to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child next week in Geneva, Switzerland.
Seto Mulyadi of the National Commission for Child Protection (Komnas PA) said on Friday that important data on rampant child abuse in the strife-torn province of Aceh as well as in Jakarta during the May 1998 violence and recent evictions were not mentioned in the report, despite specific requests from the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC).
The CRC had rejected Indonesia's earlier report compiled between 1993 and 2000 due to lack of data on child abuse in Aceh and Jakarta.
"The government should be more serious about children's problems in the country and more serious about preparing the report," said Seto after a meeting with State Minister of Women's Empowerment Sri Redjeki Soemaryoto in which they discussed the Geneva report on Friday.
Indonesia's report has been prepared by Sri Redjeki's office, and according to Seto they claimed the omissions were due to lack of statistical evidence.
The country will be the first UN member state to present its report, and will send a 24-member delegation to the Convention on the Rights of the Child from Jan. 13 to Jan. 20 but, inexplicably, it will not include any members of Komnas PA.
The government earlier claimed that it was having difficulties collecting data on child abuse as demanded by the UN due to the economic crisis in 1997 and political instability thereafter.
"But that's what we've been doing ... supplying the government with the necessary data," Seto said.
The Komnas PA report revealed, among other things, that 1,536 children would be unable to continue their schooling due to evictions in Jakarta from September to December 2003.
Seto said he wished the government would tell the truth about children's problems in the country and offered to cooperate in solving the many cases of rampant child abuse.
No Indonesian non-governmental organizations will be attend the Geneva meetings as the government has allocated all the seats to government officials from the State Minister for Women's Empowerment office, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Social Affairs.
Seto said NGO activists, as well as Komnas PA, were excluded from the delegation because they already got a chance to go to Geneva to discuss the implementation of the CRC convention in October last year.
The UN committee has invited NGOs to Geneva for next week's convention as observers.