Jakarta – After 12 years of reform following the fall of authoritarian ruler Soeharto in 1998, Indonesia still faces many barriers in its efforts toward better human rights enforcement.

The Director of Policy Research and Advocacy (Elsam), Agung Putri, said Thursday that the government's efforts to reform its law and human rights enforcement agencies had stagnated due to poor realization of human rights-related programs.

She cited research conducted by SETARA Institute, which shows that the government executed only 58 percent or 56 programs out of the 103 programs stipulated in the 2004-2009 human rights national action plan.

"The blue-print of human rights enforcement programs is good, but the realization is very poor," she said at Bakoel Koffie in Jakarta.

To date, the government has not ratified the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families, which was scheduled for ratification in 2005, and the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture, which was scheduled for ratification in 2008.

Putri said that the poor performance of two major law and human rights enforcement agencies – the National Police and the Attorney General's Office (AGO) – had made some human rights violation cases difficult to solve.

"The AGO has disappointed the public... In the last five years, it has failed to realize its human rights programs," she said. (rdf)