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.