- Antara/ Widodo S Jusuf
VIVAnews - Out of all cities and regencies in Indonesia, there is not actually a single one that is descent for children to live in. As many as 75 cities and regencies have only been committed to setting up child-friendly city.
This issue was conveyed by the Women Empowerment and Child Protection Minister Linda Gumelar during the ‘2nd International Conference on Child Friendly Asia-Pacific Engaging Children’, Thursday, June 30, 2011 in Solo.
Linda acknowledged that it is not easy to meet the parameters of child-friendly city in Indonesia considering Indonesia’s large population and inefficient administration structure. “In the period of between 2010 and 2014, we are targeting 100 regencies or cities would be committed to become child-friendly,” she said.
According to Linda, Indonesia’s large population, including children which takes up 30 percent of the total population, is a challenge for developing a child-friendly city.
In the mean time, the National Commission for Child Protection General Chairperson Arist Merdeka Sirait criticized that the child-friendly city development is more oriented toward political aspect. This is because the parameters that have been set up are a group of some ministries’ programs. So undoubtedly the child-friendly program does not touch or directly benefit children.
“What happens is the regents or mayors are competing to make policies that seem to favor children. So that they obtain the title of child-friendly city from the (central) government,” said Arist.
Arist proved that the child-friendly city development is only political. In some cities deemed as child-friendly, there were still children who did not attend or dropped out of school. There were still a lot of street children and child sexual workers, children with malnutrition, children’s snacks containing toxic content, and the lack of green landscape. “Thus it’s difficult to earn the title of child-friendly city. Heading toward a child-friendly city is possible,” he said.
Twenty Asia-Pacific countries and hundreds of regency representatives of Indonesia participated in the conference on child-friendly city. The delegations, according to Surakarta Child Protection and Community Empowerment Agency Head Widdi Srihanto, will exchange thoughts and experience on the implementation of the policy of fulfilling children’s rights in the city.
“Each delegation will share its experience about making and implementing the policy of fulfilling children’s rights in the respective city,” he said.
The conference that was held at The Sunan Hotel Solo, he went on, will exhibit some child-friendly facilities such as ‘smart park’ and child-friendly governmental health center. “The delegations such as Brazil, New Zealand, Japan, Malaysia, will be invited to visit the facilities,” he said.
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Translated by: Indah Lestari
