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4.6.3.2 Understanding Joko’s story Joko, like Siti has undergone a journey in his own development - but his is at home. He is only
eight years old, an only son, living in a family in which adults give him full attention. His context is stable, and he has peers, neighbours and school nearby. Facilities are equally accessible:
playground, river, domestic chickens and the yard. His life looks uncomplicated - in many ways it is. But no less than Siti, Joko has learned through observation to shape his personal agency. For
example:
• As a small child, Joko learned to ‘engineer’ good relationships with family. Although his mother treated him ‘bad’ and punished him, he deined this as showing her love for him. The
relationship between Joko as a rights-holder and his parents as duty-bearers was clear to him. • The adult world has given him a resource in shaping his own moral journey - his capacity to
choose what he deems to be bad or good. For example, his experience tells him that his father is a better person than his mother because he never hits him.
• Joko learned through practical experience how material values and morality interact in complex ways - his obsession with money mediates some of his family relationships.
• Joko’s navigation through the confusion of physical violence and its links to affection lead him to sometimes conduct his own experiments with violence. He has copied corporal punishment
as a recreation - throwing stones at his chickens. He was angry enough at his friend for hiding his books to want to hit him - but reflected that hitting is cruel, so he chose to maintain the
peace with his friend.
• He is strong enough to assert himself in important and sensitive areas of life. He prefers to study Arabic and the Quran at home with his father rather than attending the Quran Education
Centre. He is even willing to forego his top priority - pocket money - as the punishment for not attending.
• Joko shows a strong sense of social responsibility. Though he places a high value on the personal accumulation of money, he is happy to contribute to renovation of the house. One
of his ambitions is to join the police force to work for social justice, an ambition fuelled by watching local drunks, and the beating of a thief by neighbours who caught him. As with Siti,
the street is a classroom for moral education.
• Joko is an independent decision-maker, working from direct observation. He sees his friends and neighbours smoking but decides not to do so himself.
4.6.4 COMMONALITIES IN CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT
There are common threads running through these narratives and those presented in other sections. The five competencies of Guerra and Bradshaw 2008
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in varying stages of development are evident in the development of these children. Though the situations these
young people face are often tragic or dangerous, there are consistent patterns of positive attributes and dispositions. There is evidence of personal commitment and courage, resilience,
moral awareness, independent judgement, social responsibility and more. Prominent in the lives of these young people are:
• Home and family these are not always the same thing • Street-level experience
• School as an element of the problem not always the solution • Friendship and peer groups
• ‘Intermediary infrastructure’ e.g., ‘recovery’ NGOs • Self as independent agent
One of the implications of this analysis is to avoid the tendency to portray adolescence as a problematic cycle, to see children only from the perspective of their vulnerabilities, as being
easily attracted to antisocial behaviours, and to consider these a source of social failure. There is a growing commitment to a more positive view of young people and their capacities. Edberg
2009 in his review of adolescent research advocates a ‘positive view’ of young people and their agency, with
“a focus more on protective rather than risk factors, with resulting programs concentrating more on enhancing protective factors and less on mitigating risk factors...using the
terminology resilience for these protective qualities.”
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The draft UNICEF global strategy for adolescents proposes that “Positive adolescent development must be approached as a growth of competencies and not only as an avoidance of problems and
risks.” The focus, that is, shifts to a view of young people that identifies both their vulnerabilities and their strengths or problem-solving capabilities, and collaborates with them in making these
more effective, while providing supportive infrastructure.
What emerges from these children’s and adolescents’ stories, supported by indications from the adolescent survey results discussed in Section 3, is that:
• Young people, even as young as eight years old, or in the most stressful and unstable circumstances, have an overwhelming capacity to develop moral judgement and live by it -
i.e., young people are not only taught morality, they learn it. • Young people solve their own problems - mostly with peers - even though their solutions are
not always optimal. Adults and institutions may be a resource in a young person’s search for solutions, but they are not always the determinants of solutions.
• Young people may fail school, but school perhaps more speciically, the curriculum or the teachers often fails young people.
• Even where the family is a stable and disciplined social unit, the young person makes their own sense of it and envelopes it within their own system of autonomous values.
• Young people may ind themselves in conlict with the law and authority, but the law and authority also find themselves in conflict with young people.
4.6.5 POLICY IMPLICATIONS
“Immaturity designates a positive force or ability, the power to grow...Growth is not something done to [children]. It is something they do.” John Dewey, Democracy and Education, 1916
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1. The deinition of ‘duty-bearer’ is unstable, and a duty-bearer’s relationship to a rights-holder can be complex. It may be the young person who has to make sense of that relationship
and even manage it on behalf of the duty-bearer. Interventions can be fashioned around supporting young people to accomplish this.
568 Guerra, N. G. and Bradshaw, C. P. 2008 ‘Linking the prevention of problem behaviors and positive youth development’ 569 Edberg, M. 2009 UNICEF Latin AmericaCaribbean Adolescent wellbeing indicators
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2. What is a ‘problem’ for adults may be a ‘solution’ for young people - or a learning experience. We need not approve of ‘poor’ solutions e.g., smoking but can acknowledge
them and support young people in discovering better solutions and learning well from their experimentation.
3. School curriculum should have a prominent element of critical reflection on young people’s experience, and should serve as an access point to a supportive infrastructure for young
people. 4. At school we should see children as active agents of rights, not merely an audience to receive
knowledge. They are active agents in shaping their own lives and making life choices. Young people in classrooms are not ‘preparing’ to become citizens; they are citizens in their own
right.
5. Children need resources in order to grow. A range of resources, including family and community moral, social, economic, etc., should be available to support children’s healthy
growth.
570 Dewey, J. 1916 Democracy and education, Macmillan: NY
SECTION 5:
POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS
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INTRODUCTION
Based on the findings in this SITAN, the following recommendations are relevant for the Government of Indonesia GoI, international and local donor agencies, and other
key stakeholders concerned with improving child rights and welfare. In some, cases the recommendations are specific for particular stakeholders, and in others they are recommended
for all parties.
In general this SITAN recommends that the national and local governments directly implement many of the proposals presented here. For donors and other key stakeholders, this SITAN
recommends that support be provided for the GoI at the national and local levels to implement these recommendations, including through targeted direct implementation in cases where the
GoI requires such assistance. This may be important in some sectors or regions facing particular challenges to improving child rights and welfare.
Given limited resources, the size of Indonesia, and the new decentralised framework, to improve child rights and welfare across the country ideally donors, in particular UNICEF, would assist the
government in building the institutional framework and technical capacity to deliver policies, guidelines, services and programmes. This is in line with UNICEF’s priority of scaling up its
activities and supporting institution strengthening and capacity building. It is also in line with the GoI’s priorities as stated in the National Programme for Indonesian Children PNBAI and the
Government’s National Medium-Term Development Plan RPJMN 2010-2014, which state the GoI’s aim for a developed and inclusive Indonesia that ensures a sustainable and high quality of
life for its entire population.
The recommendations presented here aim to support the Jakarta Commitment to strengthening government ownership of development programmes while ensuring a coordinated approach
among its development partners. They also aim to contribute to the three United Nations Development Assistance Framework UNDAF focus areas that correspond to the main findings,
namely: a addressing inequity; b enhancing participation; and c strengthening resilience.
There are 10 key recommendations presented in these SITAN policy recommendations. Recommendations 7, 8 and 9 are a series of sub-recommendations based on the findings in this
SITAN.
5.1 SUMMARY OF THE 10 RECOMMENDATIONS FROM THIS SITAN
Recommendation 1: Harmonising the national and local level legal framework Recommendation 2: Mainstreaming the Indonesian Law on Child Protection and other
legislation related to child rights and welfare and promoting compliance in national and local regulations, guidelines and policies
Recommendation 3: Improving evidence-based policymaking - Reducing data deficiencies Recommendation 4: Improving evidenced-based policymaking and monitoring -
Strengthening knowledge management, data collection and analysis systems at the national and local levels
Recommendation 5: Improving evidenced-based policymaking - Producing biennial thematic SITAN of women and children and other key public documents
Recommendation 6: Establishing a comprehensive National Child Special Protection System to uphold and monitor child rights and welfare as mandated by the Indonesian Law
on Child Protection
Recommendation 7: Promoting equitable development for women and children - Targeting interventions on worst performers to improve poverty reduction and pro-poor growth, and
reach the MDGs with equity
Recommendation 8: Strengthening the decentralised system through local level capacity building and support in development planning processes - Improving consultative planning
processes, regulations, policy formulation, programme design and service delivery to be pro-child and pro-women
Recommendation 9: Advocating the scale up of specific sectoral interventions to improve child rights and welfare and reduce inequity
Recommendation 10: Communications for development to assist with knowledge building and behavioural change to support other targeted interventions and improve the situation of
women and children in Indonesia
5.1.1 RECOMMENDATION 1: HARMONISING THE NATIONAL AND LOCAL LEVEL LEGAL FRAMEWORK IN RELATION TO CHILD RIGHTS AND WELFARE
Recommended for: GoI with the support of UNICEF and international agencies
As a part of the GoI’s current commitment to pro-child policymaking and continued efforts to improve the situation of women and children in Indonesia, this SITAN recommends:
