KPAI Asks KPU-Bawaslu To Strictly Monitor Children Involved In Election Campaigns

Illustration of simultaneous 2024 General Elections (Pemilu) which includes the Presidential Election (Pilpres) and the Election Legislatig (Pileg). (Between)

JAKARTA - The Indonesian Child Protection Commission (KPAI) has asked the KPU and Bawaslu to optimize monitoring to ensure that children are not involved in campaigning and become commodities for the 2024 General Election.

"Until now, violations related to children are still found to participate in the campaign. We hope that Bawaslu and the KPU will continue to monitor," said KPAI Commissioner Dyah Puspitarini when contacted from Jakarta, Friday, January 12, quoted by Antara.

Dyah said that until the 45th day of the 2024 election campaign period, KPAI still found election participants involving children to campaign and even make children an election commodity. However, he did not specify one by one these findings.

Therefore, Dyah asked election organizers, in this case KPU and Bawaslu, at the central level to the regions not to stop monitoring and other efforts so that this does not continue.

"Bawaslu and KPU in the regions must also participate in monitoring," he said.

Furthermore, Dyah reminded again the existence of a memorandum of understanding between KPAI, the National Human Rights Agency (LNHAM), Bawaslu, and the KPU, regarding child-friendly elections that must be obeyed together for the good of Indonesian children in the future.

"KPAI, LNHAM and Bawaslu and KPU have carried out MoU related to child-friendly elections, must be obeyed together," he said.

Reflecting on the previous elections, KPAI participated in supervising child abuse in politics during the stages of the 2014 Presidential Election, 2017 and 2018 Pilkada, as well as the 2019 General Election.

The results of these surveillance show that there are still many Election and Regional Head Election participants involving children during the campaign period and the number of disputes over the election results has reached 248 cases conducted by 12 national political parties in 2014.

Furthermore, in the 2019 Election, there were violations of approximately 80 cases of child abuse by political parties participating in the election.