[Radix] Our starving children

[Jonatan Lassa]

The original article entitled "Malnutrition as Mal-development" but
later changed as "Our Starving Children"

Can be seen in http://indosasters.blogspot.com/ or
http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2009/01/23/our-starving-children.html

Article: Our starving children (The Jakarta Post, Business and
Investment - January 23, 2009)

Jonatan Lassa, Bonn

Just recently, this newspaper reported 11 children died of acute
malnutrition in Kupang, West Timor within just three weeks. Four of
them were from an ex-East Timor refugee camp in Kupang district (The
Jakarta Post, Jan. 15).

The story of the mortality of the 11 children was "fortunate" in being
seized upon by the media both at the national and the provincial
level. But this could be just the tip of the iceberg, because, while
the rest of the toll is too unfortunate to experience the spotlight,
"a silent emergency" is spreading throughout the nation.

Again, this newspaper, reported that the 11 children were not alone.
That there were more than 600 recorded infant deaths during 2007-2008
in Banyumas, Central Java, alone (The Jakarta Post, Jan. 9).

Let us make a short detour to ascertain the definition of
malnutrition. Early understanding of malnutrition, for example by
Taliaferro Clark, is "a condition of undernourishment or being
underweight. It is seen in boys and girls at any period after infancy
or in childhood". (Cited in Public Health Reports, Vol. 36 No.17,
April 29, 1921).

Today, as the Encyclopedia of International Development suggests,
malnutrition is "an anomalous physiological condition characterized by
continuous imbalances in energy, protein, and micronutrients intake
and/or absorption. "

The definition changed simply because in the North, malnutrition can
manifest as overweight and obesity. While in the developing countries
like Indonesia, especially in rural and sub-urban setting, Clark's
definition holds in the vast majority of malnutrition cases.

The question is where the responsibility lies? Who is to blame? Can
those responsible take on the critics and achieve zero cases of
malnutrition in Indonesia? Or is poverty once again to be blamed?

Since poverty seems to be impersonal, high-ranking officials and the
ruling government may only be nodding, confirming poverty as the root
cause, as the Institute of Ecosoc Rights, a Jakarta-based NGO, once
blamed poverty in their research on famine in East Nusa Tenggara (NTT)
province in 2006.

However, as the title of this article suggests, malnutrition is
actually a manifestation of poor development. Surely only
irresponsible government can be unperturbed amid the death of their
future generation.

In an informal discussion within the NTT Academia Forum (a group of
academics from East Nusa Tenggara province), a colleague of mine
strongly stressed that "we cannot be silent" on the subject of
malnutrition. The problem is, malnutrition is still seen as an event,
a killing agent, isolated, separated from the process of development
policy and practice, not seen as the product of development, or in
better terms, the daily accumulation of poor development practices.

Serious question should be asked. Why doesn't Jakarta respond to the
issue of malnutrition in the same way it responds to a war situated
6,000 km away in the Middle East, assuming that the value of human
life is the main concern?

Some may suspect that the issue is silenced because "the new
Indonesians" (i.e. ex-refugees from Timor Leste in West Timor) are not
pure Indonesian. If this should be the attitude of the elite then, in
short, may I say, we are worse than the Dutch colonial government, who
granted assets such as land in the Belu district to the influx of
Timor Leste refugees in 1911, when forced labor was imposed by
Portuguese regime in Dili.

However, this suspicion may be incorrect as malnutrition also happens
in Java and elsewhere in Indonesia. Since the actual number of
malnutrition cases is never known, unless assumptions are being made
in order to fit in with the "methodologically correct" principles.
Activists seem to favor the iceberg analogy to argue that this silent
disaster could probably have far more victims than those who have died
in Palestine. This is not to downplay our international diplomacy in
the Middle East on the rights of innocent civilians.

However, this issue begs an equal level of attention, a call for
long-term concern over the basic nutritional and food needs of the
innocent children of the Republic of Indonesia, right here at home. It
is argued that if development is about "the production of social
change that creates conditions where more and more people can achieve
their human potential, "then malnutrition is the product of
"mal-development".

Thus "mal-development" or poor development practices can be seen as
the failure of the state to develop, to progress towards human
freedom, including the freedom of the innocent children - the future
generation of the Republic.

The officials and policy makers may reduce the cases of malnutrition
to a social-cultural problem alone and not have the courage to see the
case as a systemic failure of the development programs.

Often, the legal and formal products are out there to tackle the
malnutrition problem.

However, the persistent volatility of commitment from the elite means
that the issue remains a long-standing problem.This may explain why
"mal-development" takes places and thus malnutrition persists.

The writer is a Ph.D candidate at the University of Bonn, Research on
Disaster Risk Governance and a member of Forum NTT Academia
(www.ntt-academia.org)