Portrait Of Street Children Exploitation and Child Protection in International and Indonesian Legal Instruments

Abstract

This article aims to analyze the exploitation practices of street children carried out by their families. Children who receive human rights protection under international legal instruments and Indonesian national law, do not have the power to exercise control and pressure from their families to carry out activities as street children. This study uses an empirical approach with data collection through interviews and observations. The results of the study showed that they became street children due to poverty, social influences of the environment, and parental divorce or domestic violence. In the next stage, they experience physical, psychological, emotional, and social disorders, while society stigmatizes and discriminates against them as delinquents which in turn can interfere with their mentality to grow up as a child. These children have been deprived of their rights and marginalized as a child, so it is necessary to innovate in serious service and handling from state actors and non-state actors. Any practice of child exploitation that may consist of criminal, sexual, financial, spiritual, criminal, sexual, financial, spiritual, or forced labor must be minimized and abolished while still paying attention to ethical, humane, and professional rules.