JakartaPost-Sept 16
A melting pot of mostly low-income households from diverse cultural backgrounds, the fishing village of Cilincing in North Jakarta is also home to dozens of undocumented children who lack access to basic rights. Without birth certificates, the gateway for every Indonesian citizen to education, healthcare and other state services, these children are trapped in legal limbo. In many cases, the absence of such documents is linked to unregistered marriages, unclear family ties or bureaucratic hurdles. But being undocumented children in the fishing village, which sits on the estuary of the polluted Cakung River, comes with added stigma as the area has long been associated with prostitution. “There have been many abandoned children here, some of them are children of prostitutes,” food vendor Dede Ayuhanas told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday. Dede’s food stall sits beneath a bridge underpass, where children spend their days attending informal lessons organized by the nonprofit Rumah Belajar Merah Putih (Red and White Learning Center). The learning center founder, Desi Purwatuning, said some of the children attended the classes when they were not working for purse seine fishing boats docked in a nearby port. In Indonesia, the 2013 Civil Registry Law requires births to be registered within 60 days. However, for children born in nontraditional circumstances, such as out of wedlock or to parents without legal marriages, obtaining a birth certificate often proves difficult due to legal and administrative hurdles. While no official data captures the exact number of undocumented children, estimates suggest that between 5 and 7 million across the country remain without legal identity. Read more at: https://www.thejakartapost.com/indonesia/2025/09/16/jakartas-invisible-lives-undocumented-coastal-children-denied-basic-rights.html.
