Public Opinion is Clear: Urgent Legislation Required to Protect Children from Sexual Exploitation! Read the story

Members Spotlight: ECPAT Indonesia

Advocating for countering child sexual abuse and exploitation in Indonesia

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The AMAN PROJECT promotes digital literacy between children and adolescents   

In 2020, ECPAT Indonesia conducted a survey on 1203 respondents from children aged 6 to 17 years and found that most of the children faced negative experiences online such as grooming and receiving unwanted sexual materials. With so many crimes happening on the Internet, ECPAT Indonesia aims to increase the capacity of children, young people, and parents around digital literacy for child safety online.  

To date, ECPAT Indonesia has collaborated with Meta, the Ministry of Women’s Empowerment and Child Protection, the Ministry of Communication and Information, and the National Digital Literacy Movement to prevent the online sexual exploitation of children.  

So far more than 600 children and young people aged 13-24 in 12 cities have been trained on digital literacy and safety online, next to 133 adult participants spacing from child protection activists, village officials, teachers, principals, and organizations officers that work with children. Children and young people have been trained to become peer educators too. Known as the ‘AMAN Warriors’ they promote digital literacy and prevention of child sexual abuse online in their communities. 

Find out more about the AMAN project 

“With the training provided by ECPAT Indonesia, I learned how to be more confidence to speak in front of many people, how to be a peer educator, how to facilitation online training, and how to strengthen the voice of children like me. And because of that, I decided to become an AMAN Warrior and raise awareness about child protection online.”
AMAN Warrior 

The importance of child participation   

Child participants in the AMAN project have created videos, jingles, and infographics that were published for National Children’s Day and Safer Internet Day. ECPAT Indonesia also worked with 118 organizations involved in online child protection and the content produced by the child participants was shared on their platforms, reaching up to 4 million social media users. Watch the digital materials produced by children in Indonesia for Safer Internet Day and National Children’s Day 2022. 

Follow ECPAT Indonesia on Instagram.

 

Through the Down to Zero: Building Back Better program ECPAT Indonesia is advocating for countering child sexual abuse and exploitation in the country  

 In May 2022, ECPAT Indonesia participated in the Child Protection National Conference as the culmination of the Down to Zero: Building Back Better program. The purpose of the program was to strengthen and tighten the advocacy capacity of the Indonesian government to eradicate child sexual exploitation in the country.  

Ahead of the Child Participation National Conference, ECPAT Indonesia coordinated a call for papers on child sexual exploitation, online child abuse, and the economic exploitation of children in Indonesia. This led to 8 scientific journals and 31 papers being published. Children and young people were also able to provide their own recommendations to the discussions with the government, through child and youth consultations activities. In those activities, we invited 31 organization child and youth groups in Indonesia with more than 50 participants. 

The conference resulted in the production of several recommendations coming from the Ministry of Women’s Empowerment and Child Protection, the Ministry for Human Development and Culture, Cybercrime Police Headquarters officers, academics from several National Indonesian Universities, digital private sector representatives such as Meta,  start-ups, the Association of Indonesian Internet Service Providers (APPJI), children and young people representatives, and local to national NGOs concerned with the issue of child sexual exploitation. 

Recommendations for the Indonesian government to tackle child sexual abuse: 

  • To ensure more collaboration between all parties including the private sector to protect children at local and regional levels; 
  • To ensure online service providers and social media platforms strengthen their security systems in order to protect children online; 
  • To enhance research about cybercrimes aimed at improving child protection policies online;  
  • Clear law enforcement procedures are needed to prevent child sexual exploitation; 
  • Parents and caregivers must be the target of more trainings that facilitate them understanding the language used by children online as well as for using parental control applications and counselling;  
  • Tourism companies need to actively contribute to child protection in tourism; 
  • The interests of children and their rights must remain a priority.

Find out more about the National Conference on Child Protection 

About ECPAT Indonesia

ECPAT Indonesia is a national network of twenty-two member organizations and two individuals present in 11 provinces. ECPAT Indonesia is actively involved in the implementation of initiatives that address key issues concerning children rights and child safety from child sexual abuse and exploitation at national and regional levels. The network focuses on eliminating child sexual exploitation and abuse in Indonesia.  

Click here to learn more about ECPAT Indonesia, our research in the region, and how they work to make the lives of children free from child sexual exploitation and abuse.