he National Commission on Violence against Women (Komnas Perempuan) is seeking assistance from the Presidential Working Unit for the Implementation of Pancasila as the State Ideology (UKP-PIP) in combating discrimination against women.
The commission sees the working unit as a new instrument in advocating the revocation of 421 discriminative regional policies imposed in regions across the country.
"We expect President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo will allow us to meet with the presidential working unit to discuss about those discriminative policies, so those policies will be included in the unit's agenda [for evaluation]," Komnas Perempuan chairwoman Azriana said on Tuesday.
The number of discriminative regional policies had drastically increased in the past six years from 154 in 2010 to 421 in 2016. These policies range from bylaws issued by governors and regents until circulars by village heads.
The commission’s concern on the growing number of discriminative policies has increased after the Constitutional Court ruled in April in favor of a judicial review that demanded the Home Affairs Ministry be stripped of its authority to revoke regional bylaws.
“The only way to revoke bylaws now is through the Supreme Court. The problem is that the Court only examines the available documents, so we don’t have the chance to actively participate in the hearing process,” Azriana said.
She cited two judicial reviews against the revocation of prostitution regulations in Tangerang, Banten, and Sentul, West Java which were rejected by the Court in 2011. (yon)
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