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UNESCAP Country Reports
for the Fifth Asian and Pacific Population Conference
"Population and Poverty in Indonesia"
While Indonesia has been able to reduce fertility and improve the overall quality
of life of the population, poverty still persists in many areas. It has even increased in some areas, particularly
since the 1997-1998 Asian financial crisis. However, even in area where fertility has declined there are still
areas and population subgroups which are in general poorer and for which access to health services, including reproductive
health/family planning services, remains inadequate. As a result, there has been a serious rethinking of the population-development
links in Indonesia during the decade that has elapsed since the convening of the Fourth Asian and Pacific Population
Conference in Bali in 1992.
The purposes of this country reports are: (a) to review the population and development situation, including issues
relating to reproductive health and gender equity, in Indonesia based on the goals contained in the Bali Declaration,
ICPD Programme of Action and other related documents and (b)
to highlight priority population issues relevant to Indonesia in the context of alleviating poverty and improving
the quality of life of the population. Each section will include a review of accomplishments, current status, priority
issues and future directions.
The country report is assembled to review the progress made, lessons learned and obstacles met in the implementation
of Bali Declaration on Population and Sustainable Development (1992), the Programme of Action of ICPD (1994) and
the key future actions adopted by the High-level Meeting in 1998.
Indonesia noted a close relation fragmented between and the outlined theme of the Conference and the aspiration
of Millennium Summit (2000) where our countries' leaders have set a target of reducing the proportion of people
living in absolute poverty by half by year 2015. Bearing in mind the goals and objectives of the UN Millennium
Declaration and the outcome of other major UN Conferences and summits and their reviews, in particular on population
and development, countries are obliged to strive to overcome the obstacles that block the implementations which
includes insufficient financial resources, weak commitments, inadequate institutional capacity and the protection
of vested interests.
The Conference is regarded as a momentum to re-augment both International community's concern, and in the same
virtue our national's as we perceive are experiencing diminution. Since 'population' and 'poverty' are complex
concepts and inter-sectoral issue in nature, therefore it is necessary also to disseminate and to promote pro-poor
population policy to be integrated into national long-term development strategy.
Since the economic crisis of 1997-1998 many Indonesian saw their standard of living drop sharply, and the number
of people living below the poverty line doubled over the course of the crisis. As a result, the implementation
of programme of works set out in some international commitments on population have been further impeded by shortfalls
in government's financial resources.
The effort to restore livelihoods and reduce vulnerability to poverty must
proceed at a variety of levels by ensuring that poverty reduction efforts are an integral element of recovery and
development programming at all levels.
Social development efforts should pay careful attention to demographic
matters, as well as to the culture and political environment. Re-augmenting public opinion to the significance
notion of 'population welfare' is currently of utmost importance. One of the most fundamental features of successful
and effective social programmes is political commitment in which governments
can play a decisive role in re-augmenting public concern on this matter. The awareness drives are needed to generate
a better understanding of complex inter-relationships between population and social development, particularly poverty
alleviation. Furthermore, the consistent implementation of integrated policy of population-based development will
eventually be resulting in the breaking of poverty-population-growth chain.
All the above efforts should ultimately be parallel with the exertion of maintaining and improving the quality
of public services, encouraging regional and local initiatives, followed by decentralized management, and preparation
for embracing wider concerns covering many more social aspects.
Source
UNESCAP
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