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A review of Indonesia's lackluster disability policy enforcement

I am currently working with Professor Stephen A. Rosenbaum, a disability rights lawyer and activist, on establishing a free legal clinic for the disabled community in Bali, Indonesia. Indonesia has free healthcare and great disability legislation, so why does the disabled community in Indonesia suffer so acutely compared to the rest of Southeast Asia?



On paper, Indonesia’s disability legislation should be some of the best in the world. However, these pieces of legislation have not been effective because of the lack of government data and unclear rules. Nobody knows how many disabled people there are in Indonesia. An estimate from the World Health Organization states that 24 million individuals have a disability, while the Ministry of Manpower and Transmigration (MMT) states that around 7 million people have a disability. Indonesia spends nearly 0.015% of their national budget on disability-related measures, which is approximately 144 billion US dollars. This may seem like a huge amount of money, but much of this money is given to administrator salaries. One study stated that once the government officials receive their salaries, the amount of money drops to only 5 million US dollars. This means that Indonesia spends less than a dollar for each disabled person in their country, which does not cover any of the heavy expenses of living with a disability.

Indonesia has passed a large amount of legislation to improve the lives of disabled people, but none of them seem to have any effect because of the lack of funding. A law passed in 1999 for human rights stated that disabled Indonesians should have the right to community participation. However, only 2.95% of disabled Indonesians were able to vote in the 2014 election because the booths were not accessible to them. Another act passed in 1997 stated that disabled individuals should make up 1% of the workforce, but there were no rules that stated how to implement it, so the act was ineffective. A decree made by the minister of the MMT stated that disabled individuals should be eligible for professional training, but made no rules to guarantee spots for disabled individuals in these training sessions.

The issue is not a lack of legislation, it is the lack of legal representation for disabled people to fight for their social welfare and rights. Government administrators should not have the ability to use 99% of a disability budget for their own salaries. Lawmakers should not have the ability to create laws without making rules to properly enforce them.


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