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.