A child-friendly city requires a development system fostered collectively
Jakarta (ANTARA) - The Ministry of Women's Empowerment and Child Protection underscored the need for regions to involve and collaborate with local figures to fulfill indicators required to achieve a child-friendly region status.

"(Achieving) a child-friendly city (status) needs the involvement of religious, community, and customary figures," the ministry's junior policy analyst, Andi Nirmalasari, stated at a media talk here on Friday.

Involvement of local figures is essential, as residents tend to pay greater attention to religious, community, and customary figures in their community, she remarked.

Nirmalasari said a child-friendly city is a development system that ensures the fulfillment of rights and protection to children conducted in a planned, thorough, and sustainable manner.

The ministry's analyst emphasized that for achieving the title of a child-friendly region, it would take much more than the work of local authorities, and to this end, she called to seek synergy and collaboration with all parties, including local figures.

"If implemented by only the local authority without the community's involvement, how can it be a child-friendly city? A child-friendly city requires a development system fostered collectively," Nirmalasari stated.

Meanwhile, the ministry's Deputy of Children's Rights Fulfillment Policy Formulation, Fatahillah, noted that 24 assessment indicators divided in five clusters should be fulfilled before a region can be declared child-friendly.

He noted that government ministries and agencies as well as independent teams are involved in the child-friendly region assessment, and qualified regions will be divided into five ranking tiers.

The number of regions participating in the child-friendly assessment had grown significantly in a decade, from only 35 regions in 2011 to 457 in 2022, the deputy stated.

"However, in 2022, there were only 320 regions qualified for the status according to the assessment standard for a child-friendly region," Fatahillah pointed out.

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Translator: Anita Permata D, Nabil Ihsan
Editor: Sri Haryati
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