Harsher law vital to curb women, child trafficking

Harsher law vital to curb women, child trafficking

M. Taufiqurrahman, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

An international organization asked the Indonesian government on
Monday to make the law on child trafficking harsher as the
existing laws were considered inadequate to protect those who
fell prey to traffickers and too lenient against child
traffickers.

A representative from the Geneva-based International Catholic
Migration Commission (ICMC), Ruth Rosenberg, said the absence of
a clear-cut definition of child trafficking in the country's laws
has hampered law enforcers in efforts to eliminate the practice.

"There is no definition of trafficking in any of the existing
laws. The result of that is that many criminal acts that could be
considered trafficking by international definition based on the
UN Protocol on Women and Child Trafficking, could not be punished
under Indonesian law," she told The Jakarta Post and Tempo
weekly.

She was quick to add that under the existing law victims and
witnesses in child trafficking cases were not provided
protection. "Apart from the fact that the punishment for
traffickers is too lenient, there is also no compensation for the
victims, who have been poorly paid and worked overtime during
their stints as domestic helpers," Ruth said.

Although Indonesia has ratified the International Labor
Organization (ILO) Convention No. 182 on the eradication of the
worst forms of child labor, translated into Law No. 1/2000 and
Law No. 23/2003 on labor protection that stipulates the minimum
age for children to work, there is no mention of child
trafficking.

With regards women and child trafficking, Indonesia, until
only recently, has been classified as a second tier country,
meaning that it has the awareness but is not yet implementing the
laws. Earlier, the country was categorized as a third tier
country, which means that it was deemed as having no awareness of
the problem and virtually no law enforcement against women and
child trafficking.

State Minister for Women's Empowerment Sri Redjeki Sumaryoto
earlier said that her office was preparing a bill on eradicating
women and child trafficking, which would soon be submitted to the
House of Representatives for endorsement.

A researcher from the Center for Societal Development Studies
of Atma Jaya University, Syarief Darmoyo, said that apart from
leniency in the existing laws, the lack of awareness of families
had also greatly contributed to the perpetuation of child
trafficking.

"During my six-month research in rural regions of West and
Central Java, I found that those who trafficked girls from their
home villages to Jakarta and other major cities were in fact
acquaintances, neighbors and even close relatives," he told a
seminar on child trafficking.

He said that such a practice stemmed from poverty that had
afflicted most of families in a number of resource-poor regions.

Syarief also underlined that children who had been trafficked
and worked in big cities like Jakarta were prone to exploitation
from their employers. "In a number of cases, we found that they
were like hostages, their ID card and salary were withheld, so
that they would remain with the households that employed them,"
he said.

Given the magnitude of children employed as domestic helpers,
he called on the government to draft a law on women and child
trafficking that would touch on the issue.