Indonesia is arguably one of the ASEAN countries with a good record in
the implementation of political rights for its disabled citizens, as shown to
some extent when it elected the late Abdurrahman Wahid, who was visually
impaired, as president. The nation, however, still has a lot of homework to
empower the disabled.
Only last year, Indonesia
ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with
Disabilities (UNCRPD), while it is also committed to ratifying the ASEAN Human
Rights Declaration, expected to be adopted at the ASEAN Summit in Cambodia,
Nov. 18-20.
“Now is the time to create
synergy between the central government and local administrations, between
ministries and with other stakeholders to concretely implement the ratified
convention for wider access in civil and political life for persons with
disabilities,” said Hasan Kleib, the Foreign Ministry’s director general for
multilateral affairs.
He was speaking at the second
regional dialogue on access to elections for persons with disabilities
in Nusa Dua on Nov. 10-11, hosted
by the General Election Network for Disability Access (AGENDA), which is
supported by USAID. Envoys from ASEAN countries, as well as Australia, Ireland,
Japan, Mongolia, Nepal and the US, attended the event.
Hasan highlighted that Indonesia
urgently required a detailed national database on the numbers and types of
disabilities in its population as data currently greatly differed from one
source to another. According to the Central Statistics Agency (BPS), less than
5 percent of the 237,641,326 national population recorded in 2010 were
categorized as disabled. Nonetheless, the World Health Organization has
estimated that around 10-15 percent of the Indonesian population is disabled.
“Even if there’s only one disabled
person, he/she still is the government’s responsibility because this is a
matter of human rights. However, only with accurate data will the government be
able to work more progressively and effectively, especially in terms of budget
allocation,” said Hasan. “All regencies and municipalities must start
collecting data on people with disabilities in their regions.”
Chairman of the Indonesian
Disabled Peoples Association (PPCI) Gufroni Sakaril said that, as disability
was yet to be used as an indicator in the national population census, many
disabled citizens had not been recorded as such in the census.
Thus, he emphasized the urgency
to conduct a parallel struggle for the implementation of both civil and
political rights for disabled people.
Gufroni stated that Indonesia was
relatively on par with countries like the Philippines and Thailand that even
have had disabled representatives in their parliamentary houses.
“We don’t have envoys yet in our
House of Representatives, but in the past 7-8 years, some disabled people have
started actively running for political seats. Yes, we’ve seen some progress,
although at an extremely slow pace,” said Gufroni.
Some examples of Indonesia’s
well-noted progress in electoral accessibility for the disabled includes their
active participation in recent mayoral elections in Singkawang, West Kalimantan
and Bekasi, West Java, as well as the government’s efforts to provide
accessible voting booths, ballots and voting boxes in the last two general
elections.
Gufroni said that although Law
No. 4/1997 on disabled people had already been in existence for over a decade,
its contents, which cover not only political rights, but also health and
employment rights for people with disabilities, had never been legally
enforced.
For example, the law stipulates
that disabled persons should account for one percent of staff in all companies
in Indonesia, which is mostly ignored.
Agnes Winarti
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