Reportage: Promises won’t solve street children’s problems: Activists

More parties have voiced skepticism over the government’s ability to fulfil its commitment to solving problems facing street children by 2014.

Critics argue that the root causes of childhood poverty and homelessness are too complex to be solved over such a short timeframe, reminding that the government’s past track record in addressing the issue has hardly been encouraging.

While civil society groups have played an important role in dealing with this issue, the government’s latest target appears to have been established without consulting these disenfranchised people to discuss strategies, timeframes, and terms and conditions for problem resolution.

Maria Tinambunan, operational manager for the Jakarta branch of the Indonesian Street Children Organization (ISCO), questions both the government timeframe and its proposed steps to reach the 2014 target.

“It’s a very complicated issue,” Maria told The Jakarta Post. “We have been working for 10 years to solve the problem of children taking to the streets [to earn money] and have not yet been completely successful. If the government has set a target of 2014, how do they plan to achieve it? The government itself still does not have a program [to resolve the issue].”

ISCO works to provide marginalized children in and around Jakarta with access to education, health services and protection from abuse.

As a non-governmental organization, ISCO does not receive direct funding from the government, although the Social Services Ministry does contribute support in the form of books and other school supplies, Maria said.

While government support is a welcome contribution to the group’s activities, she feels that it is mainly superficial, and that ISCO could function without it thanks to local community support. However, she believes that it is not the community’s role to solve the problems of Indonesia’s street children. “That should be the function of the government, not the society,” she said.

Maria argues that street children without parents should be provided with foster parents, while the biological parents of street children should receive parental education. Furthermore, all children should have access to education and training. However, these rights have not yet been provided by the government, and have been mostly attended to by civil society groups such as ISCO.

Past government efforts to address the issues confronting Indonesia’s street children have included detaining street children caught busking or begging until they are bailed out by family members or civil society advocacy groups. In other cases street children have been relocated to other cities or to government-run shelters, often against their will.

Community advocate for children’s rights, Agustinus Tedja, runs a network for street children in Malang, East Java, which provides shelter, educational opportunities and support to homeless and impoverished children. Many of the children involved in the community network say that they have received little support from the government in terms of basic welfare or access to education.

Several of these child buskers also say they have been forcibly relocated by police from Malang to the island of Madura, where they had no choice but to continue busking until they were able to return to Malang to reconnect with their support networks.

The situation for street children in Indonesia is gradually improving in part because of better targeted government efforts to support civil society groups involved in the protection of children and the promotion of children’s rights, Tedja said.

However, there is still a long way to go towards solving these problems, not only in improving government programs, but also changing community attitudes towards street children and their families, he added.

In an attempt to spread a more positive image of street children in the community, Tedja heads a touring music troupe of former child buskers, promoting public recognition of the difficulties street children face in attaining basic rights, such as access to education.

With the slogan “I’m a child of the nation too”, the troupe promotes the right of all Indonesian citizens to attain an education, regardless of their economic circumstances.

Other civil society groups work together with the families of street children to end the cycle of child poverty and homelessness. The international organization SOS Children’s Village program provides both foster care and parenting education for marginalized children in nine centers nationwide.

In Cikaret, Bogor, SOS works together with urban communities to keep children off the street and provide them education.

By providing a place for children to play together and study after school, the organization is able to prevent many children from becoming involved in busking, begging and child labor, SOS Cikaret Secretariat representative Gusti Awing said.

SOS also runs a family support program helping single mothers keep their children in school and off the streets. The program provides families with school supplies, scholarships, and education on good parenting, nutrition and children’s rights. SOS works in cooperation with the local government, but is mostly run and funded by community volunteers.

“Many people don’t realize that children have special rights,” Gusti said, adding that that education is the key to overcoming both child poverty and negative perceptions of street children in the community.

While civil society groups continue their efforts to provide sustainable solutions for the problems faced by Indonesia’s street children, the Social Services Ministry’s 2014 target remains ill-defined.

Agustinus Tedja argues that finding a solution to this dilemma will be crucial for Indonesia’s future.

“Children are national assets. Why do street children face discrimination? They are intelligent. They only lack opportunity.”