Review of laws needed to adress population issues
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."