MDGs PROGRESS REQUIRING SPECIAL ATTENTION

THE SITUATION OF CHILDREN AND WOMEN IN INDONESIA 2000-2010 366 THE SITUATION OF CHILDREN AND WOMEN IN INDONESIA 2000-2010 367 Knowledge of: • The latest development of national lawsregulationsguidelines. • How to interpret national instrumentsstrategiesprogrammes and translate them locally, even when local coordination mechanisms and the political will exists. • How to interpret national level regulations, principles and ideas into local dialects mismatch between national language and local dialects. • How to create a local enabling regulatory environment - e.g., draft local regulationsdraft guidelines or a complete absence of regulations based on lack of political will to create these. • How to do child budgeting. • How to socialisemainstream guidelinesprogrammesplans. • How to create awareness in communities about key issues and stimulate behavioural change. Insufficient capacity of: • Local mainly districtmunicipal human resources in terms of technical capacity, knowledge and adequate numbers required to implement initiatives. • Absent or weak e.g., newly formed Bureau of Women’s Empowerment and Child Protection and thus absent or weak coordination of sectoral agencies providing services and programmes affecting children. Data and monitoring: • Absent or weak local level data collection and monitoring systems relating to child rights, protection and welfare, and programmeservice impact and outreach. An absence of political will and budget commitment: • ln some areas to prioritise children in policies and budgeting. • To create an enabling regulatory environment time delays were also a problem. • To prioritise the outcomes of needs, priorities, ideas, and innovations from the consultative planning processes musrenbang at the village and sub-district levels for district level development planning and the district level for provincial level development planning. Coordination: • Poor coordination between oficesagencies and between levels of government, sometimes replicating initiatives, sometimes complicating initiatives. • Competition between oficesagencies for key tasks and functions and associated budgets and year to year transfer between officesagencies. The voices of children, women and practitioners: • An absence or weak presence of the voices of children, women and child-focused practitioners in the musrenbang; in many regions musrenbang processes continue to be dominated by elite views. • Mismatch between children’s and women’s needs articulation processes through musrenbang and strategic plans and actual policies implemented, as these are often dominated by political priorities or elite views. Partnership: • Weak government-CSO partnerships and pro-child initiatives in some cases; where government-CSO partnerships was stronger there were indications of improvements in service delivery. Improving the system of development planning, policymaking and service delivery is particularly difficult when resource constraints are coupled with weak local capacity, as in the case of many of the provinces in eastern Indonesia, such as NTT. In these cases, the bulk of the local budgets around three quarters provided for by the national government in the general allocation fund DAU are required for operational costs particularly civil service wages, and the special allocation fund DAK is in most cases reserved for infrastructure development, based on directives from the Ministry of Finance. This limits the extent to which the central government can earmark and distribute funds for special local level needs relating to children and ensure that they reach beneficiaries, as there are limited guarantees that funding distributed through the DAU to improve the situation of children will not be used for other priorities. Distributing such funds through line ministry projects is also made more difficult in the decentralised contexts as the process of increasing the absorption capacity is ongoing. In the poorer provinces and districts in Indonesia, children’s needs are competing with infrastructure development and other priorities. Revising the national regulatory framework to allow for DAK funds to be distributed for non- infrastructure costs related to child needs may go some way to at least increasing the resource base for poorer areas and creating the political will for prioritizing children’s needs. There are also, however, the deconcentration funds, which the provincial governments can used to promote coordination and improve inter-district disparities, particularly in multi- sectoral approaches for knowledge management, training and capacity building at the district level, to improve child rights and welfare. However, the provinces have limited scope for direct programme implementation in most regions with the exception of Special Autonomy provinces, and therefore greater attention needs to be given to gaining the commitment of district level governments and leadership to implement provincial goals and funded initiatives. Working with the provincial government in coordination and knowledge management is a key recommendation of this SITAN for donors and other stakeholders possessing the technical and programming knowledge to improve child welfare.

5.8.2 LEARNING FROM INNOVATIONS

In spite of the challenges, Section 4 demonstrated how attention to child welfare and rights could be improved through initiatives and innovations within districts. Some key findings that are relevant for the GoI include: • For service delivery and programmes to have an impact they need to be enacted at the district level in most provinces and at both the provincial and district level in provinces with Special Autonomy. • Effective interventions required: o A clear provincial and district regulatory framework that was aligned with strategic plans, annual work-plans, consultative planning forum priorities, budgets, technical guidelines and programmes. o The political will of the district and provincial leadership to create a pro-child policy and regulatory framework, as well as to earmark budgets for child needs see, for example, the case of the Child-Friendly City in Surakarta, Section 4.5. o The creation of special working groups and task forces with a strong mandate from the governor at the provincial level or the district headmayor at the local level, together with the support of parliament and enacted through local regulations and decrees and sufficient budget to act. Sectoral and multi-sectoral task forces that include both government and non-government initiatives, resources and expertise were key to