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Amid progress, many RI children 'still being left behind'
Jasmine WhitbreadIndonesiaâs 85 million children face serious challenges to early development
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Jasmine Whitbread
Indonesia's 85 million children face serious challenges to early development. The UN estimates that 190,000 children in the country die each year before their fifth birthday and government data says Indonesia has the fifth-highest number of stunted children (7.8 million) in the world. The Jakarta Post's Mark Wilson talked to Save the Children International CEO Jasmine Whitbread, who was recently in Jakarta to meet Health Minister Nila Moeloek, about these challenges and what Save the Children was doing to help.
Question: What issues did you discuss with the minister?
Answer: First, we talked about child mortality. One of our big focuses is stopping children dying from preventable causes before their fifth birthday ' the famous Millennium Development Goal (MDG) number four. Indonesia is estimated to be on track to meet the goal of reducing child mortality by two-thirds by 2015 and has made huge progress at the national level, but many children are still being left behind at the local level.
It's estimated that 440 children die each day from preventable causes like diarrhea, neo-natal complications or malaria. If you're in a remote area of Indonesia, in a poor family, facing discrimination, then your life chances are very low. That's not fair and it doesn't have to be like that.
Second, we talked about nutrition. If a child doesn't get the right nutrition then he or she will grow up stunted, either mentally or physically, or both, which has massive economic as well as moral implications. We discussed with the minister an approach to nutrition that not only requires the involvement of the Health Ministry, but also the ministries of agriculture, education, public works and water. Indeed, the minister has already begun collaboration with other ministries on this issue.
Finally, we talked about knowledge-sharing. Save the Children works in around 100 countries across the world. We have around 20,000 staff with a lot of knowledge and experience, but it's also about being able to share what we know.
The minister was eager to learn about our experiences around the world and about data on what works and what doesn't in order to scale-up programs based on that evidence. This is only going to result in positive changes for children.
How does your organization help children in Indonesia?
We want to not just help children, but to bring about real change in their world. To do this, we work on the ground, working with our many partners, and then we advocate for change on the back of that.
In Indonesia, we have programs in health and nutrition, education, children protection and emergencies, with an annual budget of US$7.8 million. We respond to big emergencies [like providing relief in the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami or the 2010 eruptions of Mount Merapi] and smaller-scale ones. This month we were responding to flooding in North Jakarta, for example.
Children are a very important part of our disaster risk reduction work here. We work with them in schools and we ask them to map disaster risks. They'll tell us where the floods hit and where the safe places are. They have a lot of knowledge about how to be prepared for disasters and we harness that.
Where does Indonesia stand regionally on child issues?
If you take MDG 4 on child mortality, we congratulated the minister for hopefully being on track to meet it, because not all the countries in the region will have done that. However, there's a particular issue around newborn deaths that is not improving and the government knows this is a problem.
On disasters, I think there's a real focus here on being prepared. Given Indonesia's history with disasters, a lot of people here, including our staff, have been through these issues, so there's a lot of experience that can be drawn on. In addition, we have just visited the AHA Center (ASEAN Coordinating Centre For Humanitarian Assistance) based right here in Jakarta. Having something like that here says a lot about this country's approach to disasters and is probably an advantage for Indonesia.
Are there any other pressing concerns that children face?
We're particularly concerned about child protection. For many years, we've been working with the government on the phenomenon of putting poor children into orphanages, but actually they aren't orphans and many still have at least one parent alive. We think that's shocking and must change. The government agrees with us and we are partnering with them.
We've got a great program to try and address child-protection issues like this, in fact its one of our globally recognized, signature programs that we'd like to see replicated elsewhere. I think the problem is particularly severe in Indonesia, but it's good that there's a great solution. It just needs to be scaled-up and rolled out.
What's your sense of the government's commitment to meeting the challenges faced by children?
The commitment is definitely there, but the problem in Indonesia is more about implementation than it is about having the wrong policies. The country is vast and complex, so implementing things is the biggest challenge. For example, the government already has a newborn children action plan, but the challenge is how to effectively implement it at the sub-national level.
