Trafficking of Children

For many years, Indonesia has been plagued by big problems related to the illegal trafficking of children, but only few were exposed to the public.

One of the victim was Erwin, who according to Hukum Online was two months old when an Irish couple Joseph and Lala Dowse brought him to Ireland in 2001, processed adoption, changed his name to Tristan Dowse and arranged Irish nationality for him.
According to Wikipedia, two years later Lala got pregnant, so the couple sent Tristan back to the orphanage in Jakarta where they have adopted him, saying that the adoption didn't work.
The Indonesian Department of Social reacted by claiming that the adoption was illegal, which was denied by the Irish Adoption Board.
In 2006, an Irish court ordered the Dowses to pay an immediate lump sum of €20,000 to Tristan, maintenance of €350 per month until he is 18 years of age, and a further lump sum of €25,000 when he reaches the age of 18. In addition, Tristan would remain an Irish citizen and enjoy all the rights to the Dowses’ estate, and Tristan’s mother Suryani was appointed his sole legal guardian.

What happened to Erwin=Tristan is actually not so bad compared to many thousand others whose faith were uncertain. According to The Jakarta Globe, Local and international groups have estimated that more than 100,000 Indonesian women and children are trafficked annually for commercial sex exploitation, to foreign countries, including Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong.

In order to prevent Trafficking of Women & Children to foreign countries, nine years ago, our government has signed the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crimes, which was ratified by the parliament (DPR) last December. Further, on Tuesday the DPR ratified the UN Protocol Againts Human Trafficking.

As a conclussion, I felt that now that we have our national laws and the above UN Conventions, the law enforcement would have no more problem to protect our Children from becoming victims of human trafficking, and to take actions against any violators.