Indonesia fails to protect children's rights: Activists

JAKARTA (JP): A member of the National Commission for Child Protection (Komnas PA) reproached the government on Monday for its failure to protect children, pointing to the fact that many of them die each year of preventable diseases.

Irwanto of the Center of Community Development Studies at Atma Jaya University charged that many of the policies concerning the protection of children in the health and education fields were merely slogans.

"To see the situation of children today is like opening a wound that never heals," Irwanto said during a discussion held at the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) office here.

As an example, Irwanto said that "the biggest causes of child mortality are actually highly preventable diseases such as diarrhea and acute respiratory infection."

Citing health ministry statistics, he said diarrhea accounted for about one-third of deaths of infants under five-years old, while acute respiratory infections accounted for 14 percent of infant deaths on Java and 20 percent outside of Java.

Other sources of infant death include tetanus and various infections.

Irwanto also said that malnutrition was sadly still a major problem among children.

He then attacked the government's mandatory education program, saying that it had only "managed to get children registered in primary school (SD)."

He said statistics showing that only 60 percent of those students would graduate clearly pointed out the reality of the program.

He added that only 70 percent of those who graduate from primary school would go on to junior high school, while from those only 40 percent would actually continue to high school.

Many were prevented from continuing their education because of lack of funds or were forced to help support the family by finding work.

There are around 1.7 million children nationwide working in hazardous places such as offshore fisheries and factories without adequate protection, not to mention 70,000 underage sex workers, he said.

"The law has not been protecting children's interests," Irwanto charged.

He said one legal deficiency was that the criminal code ruled that anyone raping a woman above 15 years old could be sentenced to jail for six to 12 years. But if a minor under 12 years old was raped the sentence was less than six years.

"The law actually promotes child abuse," he remarked.

He said the commission would soon submit a draft bill on child protection which would allow it to take custody of children abused by their parents.

Irwanto said the draft would be brought to the legislature in two weeks. (08)