Review of laws needed to adress population issues
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The country needs to revise legal rulings, allocate funding and establish clear organizational structure to implement recommendations from the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD+5), a discussion panel concluded on Tuesday.
ICPD+5 is a review of the 1994 ICPD recommendations made in Cairo, Egypt, which required signatories of the regulations to implement them in national policies.
These policies should cover poverty eradication, education prioritizing girls and women, gender equity and equality, the reduction of infant and maternal mortality rates, reproductive health, including programs to fight HIV/AIDS, food security, human rights protection and environmental preservation.
Suko Bandiyono, demography expert at the National Institute of Sciences, said during the discussion Law No. 10/1992 on the development of population and welfare needed to be revised to accommodate the changes in population issues and to accommodate the recommendations of ICPD+5.
"The law does not cover single-parent families. The norm of small families in the law is no longer relevant because we need families with quality," he said.
The law has no articles supporting women's empowerment, the rights of children and the handicapped, reproductive rights and gender equality and equity, he said.
Currently, Indonesia is home to some 56 million poor people and its maternal mortality rate is 373 per 100,000 live births, 10 times higher than Thailand, 11 times higher than Malaysia and 75 times higher than Singapore. And some 40 infants die for every 1,000 live births each year.
Another speaker at the discussion, Siswanto Agus Wilopo, deputy of Family Planning and Reproductive Health at the National Family Planning Board, said a combination of sufficient funding and clear organizational structure had proven successful for population programs.
"The presence of both elements prove that the government has political will to address population problems. However, we don't have a ministry of population right now and the funding is also limited. Maybe the issue of population is not attractive to the government," he said.
Nesim Tumkaya, the United Nations Population Fund Representative to Indonesia, said the country should make quick policies to tackle adverse population problems, especially in fighting HIV/AIDS.
"This threat is a serious one; there are some estimated 120,000 cases now. You may consider it as low prevalence but it is rapidly rising. There is the possibility millions of people will be infected in the immediate future."