2024 sectoral budget briefs and notes

Highlights

The Government of Indonesia (GoI) is committed to realizing children’s rights and enabling them to grow as future productive citizens, as articulated in its National Medium-Term Development Plan 2020–2024. Moreover, in the past two decades, Indonesia has made impressive economic progress to drive more than half of its poor and vulnerable groups out of poverty.

The country is also among middle-income economies that aspire to join the high-income group by 2045.1 The country’s Human Development Index (HDI) also improved to 74.39 in 2023, an increase of 0.62 points (0.84 per cent compared to previous years (73.77) but is still lagging behind countries at similar development levels, with gaps evident in child health and education.

Therefore, a comprehensive understanding of the public finance focusing on efficiency, effectiveness, and equity of government spending in Indonesia’s social sectors is crucial to ensure fulfillment of children’s rights. This budget brief provides an overview of Indonesia’s social sector financing specifically related to children and highlights key public financing trends and issues that require urgent GoI attention, with recommendations to guide the way forward. In doing so, this budget brief draws on data and information in the key programming areas of UNICEF in Indonesia: Early Childhood Education (ECE), Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH), Health, Nutrition, Social Protection and Child Protection.