Misery and pain not yet over
Hendarsyah Tarmizi, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Yanto, a 12-year old, has to wake up early in the morning to begin his day as a newspaper boy, while his friends of the same age enjoy their sleep on comfortable beds.
His morning job lasts only about four hours a day, but it is only one part of his routine. In the afternoon, he has another job, helping his uncle sell fruit in the town.
For the first six months, Yanto was able to remain at school but after that, he was suspended. With his new "profession", Yanto found it difficult to divide his time between work and study.
Yanto is one of the victims of the country's worst ever economic crisis, which started to shake up the country's business activities in late 1997.
Millions of workers, mostly in the construction sector and labor-intensive industries, lost their jobs when the crisis peaked in the middle of 1998.
Yanto and hundreds, if not thousands, of other teenagers have been forced to share their families' burden as their fathers, whom they were once able to rely on, can no longer support their households.
Although Yanto's father has taken up another job as a neighborhood night guard, his income of about Rp 150,000 (roughly US$15) per month is far from enough to buy daily necessities for the family.
The crisis, which jacked up prices more than three-fold due to the fall in the value of the rupiah, further worsened the situation. With less money, if there is any at all, they have to spend more.
Three years have passed, but the crisis is not yet over. Although the economy has showed healthy signs of recovery since early last year, only a few job openings are available.
Almost every street corner in Jakarta and other big cities is still crowded with teenagers, either busking or selling goods.
A 10-year old girl carrying her three-year-old sibling on her hip while begging at a traffic light or busking on a crowded bus is still an unusual scene.
Over the years, the street has become everything to them. They have built their own community, mixing with adult traders, beggars, street singers and even pickpockets. They can no longer differentiate between good and bad. Fighting and stealing have become part of the business.
Are they wrong? Maybe, but the truth is that most of them are hungry.
The street children's misery does not stop there. They have often been forced into sex work and prostitution.
According to the results of research conducted by the Jakarta- based Atmajaya University, such children are often abused or sodomized within their first three months on the street.
Although the survey was carried out in early 1998, it seems the data are still valid for the current situation.
Thousands of children displaced due to racial conflicts in Ambon and Central Kalimantan, and their East Timorese friends in the Atambua refugee camp in East Nusa Tenggara Timor, present another bleak picture of the country's children.
According to data provided by UNICEF, over six million Indonesian children aged between six and 15 years are not in school. They either never enrolled or dropped out. This is so in spite of the government's policy of compulsory education up to the age of 15. Many of them are now engaged in hazardous or exploitative forms of child labor.
UNICEF says that about 150,000 children are homeless and live unprotected on the streets of Indonesia's major cities. "An estimated 40,000 are child sex workers," the agency said in a report.
About six million of Indonesia's 23 million children aged below five are also under-weight and malnourished. More than half of the under-fives have "hidden hunger" deficiencies of vitamin A, iron and zinc.
In its annual report, which was released in September this year, UNICEF said that despite outstanding examples of progress on children's welfare in the last decade, most governments had not lived up to the promises made at the 1990 Summit for Children.
According to the report,The State of the World's Children 2002, more than 10 million children aged under five still die each year from preventable causes; 149 million children in developing countries still suffer from malnutrition; more than 100 million are still not at primary school (the majority of them girls); and millions are still caught up in child labor, trafficking, prostitution and conflicts.
The Indonesian government has made numerous efforts to cope with school dropouts, malnutrition and child abuse. The private sector has also made a significant contribution, but there is still unfinished business. More should be done to ensure that today's children will become our future.
The problems facing children are highly complex, but ignoring them in the early years will destroy their entire lives.