Child Poverty in Indonesia: Contextual Analysis

Abstraksi

This paper is investigating the contexts of child poverty in Indonesia. Child poverty is major issues in In Indonesia. There is a large proportion of children who experience deprivation. However, this paper found that protecting children is articulated in Indonesian regulations. Indonesia also ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). Since Indonesia put large attention on poverty reduction, it should be expected that Indonesia also has large attention on child poverty issues. Nevertheless, in addition to struggling to fulfil the child rights, the evidence shows that Indonesia does not have a clear understanding of the meaning of child poverty in its legislation. Even the definition of poverty and children in Indonesian legislation and policy frameworks are contesting and contrast each other. Indonesia also does not have a clear target on eradicating child poverty and does not have a policy that is focusing on child poverty. Furthermore, the consideration of children as individuals with different needs to adults are not taken into account in the poverty measures applied by government. Fortunately, the design of Indonesian poverty reduction strategy allows children to get some benefit since the government put the major attention of poverty reduction effort for supporting poor households, including their children. However, poor children are not necessarily same as poor households, and the effectiveness of household-based poverty reduction strategies to eradicate child poverty should be contested.