Take us seriously: the lack of meaningful child participation in the design process of Child Friendly Integrated Public Spaces in Jakarta (RPTRA)

The primary objective of this research is to investigate the lack of an enabling environment for meaningful child participation in the design process of the Jakarta Child Friendly Inte-grated Public Space Initiatives (RPTRA). I employed a Child-Centered Participatory Ap-proach (CCPA) involving 19 children (from RPTRA Jaka Teratai, RPTRA Cipinang Besar Utara, and RPTRA Anggerek) as well as 20 adults who worked with these children in the RPTRA design process. The research findings confirm that the lack of an enabling environ-ment for meaningful child participation in the RPTRA design process was triggered by a lack of understanding of child participation among both the children and adults involved. This manifested in various issues including: discrimination in child recruitment; failure to enable equal participation for children from marginalised groups such as children with disabilities; and adult-dominated decision-making causing manipulation of the process and tokenistic child participation. To address the failure to realize meaningful child participation in this kind of RPTRA activities, I argue for the child rights duty bearers involved in RPTRA to develop a compre-hensive policy aimed at creating an enabling environment for meaningful child participation. This policy should revolve around five holistic elements: raising the awareness of children and adults about children’s rights using creative campaigns as well as capacity building; uti-lising non-discrimination values; providing a monitoring and evaluation system for children; employing a task-based method that is friendly and fun for children; and developing a col-laborative decision-making approach between adults and children.