Jakarta – The United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef) has disclosed that between 40,000 and 70,000 Indonesian children – 'mostly girls' – are being sexually exploited commercially and are bonded to child-prostitution networks.

Unicef Resident Representative to Indonesia Rolf Carriere was quoted by the Indonesian Observer as having said that young children without birth certificates were the most susceptible to abuse and exploitation.

'Some 50 per cent of Indonesian children do not possess a birth certificate, although registration of birth is the state's first acknowledgment of a child's existence,' Mr Carriere said in Jakarta recently. 'Such children are more likely to miss out on school and health care and are far more vulnerable to abuse and exploitation.'

He told the Observer that millions of Indonesian children lived under difficult circumstances. They were being denied their fundamental rights to basic services and access to information, he said. At least 150,000 impoverished children are homeless, living unprotected on the polluted streets of the country's major cities.

But they are not the only children who need protection. 'So do the six million children aged between six and 15 years that are out of school. Those children either never enrolled in school or dropped out. Many of them are engaged in hazardous or exploitative forms of child labour,' said Mr Carriere.

He said more than 120,000 children were involved in substance and drug abuse, some because of a lack of information, education and services. Furthermore, major political and social upheaval in several provinces had displaced over one million persons throughout Indonesia, and most of them were children and women.

'From the context of a changing society, moreover one affected by a severe economic crisis, has emerged the recognition that there are many children all around Indonesia who, by virtue of their vulnerability and marginalisation, are in need of special protection,' said Mr Carriere.

Many uneducated people, including some Westerners, believed they could get rid of sexually-transmitted diseases by having sex with a young girl, the paper reported.