Indonesia Moves to Protect Children

Indonesia said Saturday that it was monitoring its borders to prevent child traffickers from smuggling young victims of the tsunami out of the country. It also plans to set up centers in refugee camps to care for children and reunite them with their families.

The government and UNICEF also will establish centers to care for traumatized women, Minister of Women’s Empowerment Meutia Hatta said.

UNICEF spokesman John Budd said the centers would provide healthcare and counseling for children and try to reunite them with their families. Women and children who have lost family members will be cared for at the centers.

“If a child is without parents and family, they are incredibly vulnerable,” Budd said.

Twenty centers staffed by about 380 trained volunteers will be set up in hard-hit Aceh province, Meutia said.

“The volunteers’ duty is to restore the self-confidence of women and children,” Meutia said. “There are plenty of women feeling empty and who keep crying because they lost their families.”

There have been sporadic reports of attempted child trafficking in Indonesia since the Dec. 26 earthquake in the Indian Ocean triggered a deadly tsunami, but police say there have been no confirmed cases.

Authorities believe as many as 30,000 children are among those killed in Indonesia in the disaster. The country raised its official death toll Saturday to 104,055 as the total in 11 nations surpassed 150,000.

Medan, the main city on the island of Sumatra, has a reputation as a base for criminal gangs that sell children into servitude or for sexual exploitation.