Call for legal reforms to protect children in Indonesia

Indonesian authorities need to implement legal reforms and more rigidly apply the new Child Protection Act if children in Indonesia are to be better protected against commercial sexual exploitation. This is a key recommendation of a new report to be released at the Consultation on Legal Reform to Combat the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in Indonesia, hosted by children’s rights organisations ECPAT International and Plan International at the Hotel Santika in Jakarta on Monday, 6 December 2004.

The Report on Laws and Legal Procedures Concerning the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in Indonesia will be presented by ECPAT International and two legal researchers to a meeting of judges, government officials, lawyers, law enforcement personnel and children’s rights advocates. This report was written and researched in collaboration between ECPAT International and legal consultants Antarini Arna, Director of Yayasan Pemantau Hak Anak (Children’s Human Rights Foundation), and Mattias Bryneson, legal consultant.

The report and consultation stem from a joint initiative between ECPAT International and Plan International to investigate legal responses in Indonesia, India, Bangladesh and Nepal to the commercial sexual exploitation of children, including the prostitution of children, child pornography and trafficking of children for sexual purposes. The Indonesia seminar is the final in a series of national meetings held in each project country since October.

The report highlights concerns about inconsistencies and gaps in the law, especially with regard to the treatment and protection of children. For example, prostitution is one of the main forms of commercial sexual exploitation of children in Indonesia. But the law does not provide for children who are sexually exploited in the streets and brothels to be treated as victims of a crime. Instead, they are more likely to be treated as criminals. This is because the Criminal Code contains no provisions relating to commercial sexual transactions with a child even as it allows for punishment of children forced into street prostitution, either for offences against public order or as vagrants.

Meanwhile, people who pay for sex with a child and those who facilitate this action commonly escape punishment due to the lack of explicit laws targeting people who buy sex with children and weak enforcement of existing laws on pimping.

A critical factor is limited awareness of commercial sexual exploitation of children as a crime. In particular, the legal system is lacking in specialist practitioners trained especially on these issues. Within the report, police, prosecutors and judges all say they need higher-quality training on child rights issues, sexual violence against children and the country’s two-year-old Child Protection Act.

Currently, the Child Protection Act is rarely used as intended because many legal officers do not fully understand the Act’s provisions and how to implement them. As a result, judges and prosecutors tend to resort to the Criminal Code in cases involving sexual exploitation, even though the Code is a weak mechanism for protecting children against sexual violence.

Overall, the report calls for stronger laws and articulated regulations and procedures to help law enforcement and legal officers take tougher action against all forms of commercial sexual exploitation of children. It also recommends reforms to address ambiguities about the definition of a child under Indonesian law, stronger measures to ensure the identity and age of all children can be properly established, further measures to ensure child-friendly legal procedures are more widely adopted within the legal system, and the establishment of special units for cases involving children.

Indonesia report (English / Recommendations (Bahasa) / Executive Summary (Bahasa)

For more information, please contact:

Ms Catherine Beaulieu, ECPAT International Associate Legal Officer, at catherine@ecpat.net, or info@ecpat.net