While many migrants and asylum-seeking children may try to reach Australia, they often spend months or years caught in Indonesia. This report focuses on the thousands of children—accompanied and unaccompanied—who enter Indonesia every year, and it documents the abusive conditions and interminable waits children face during the months and years they spend in limbo in Indonesia. Each year, a growing number of asylum seekers—primarily from Afghanistan, Somalia, Sri Lanka, and Burma— enter Indonesia in search of safer lives. At the end of February 2013, there were 9,226 refugees and asylum seekers in UNHCR’s active caseload in Indonesia, a 2,000 percent increase since 2008. Almost 2,000 asylum-seeking and refugee children were in Indonesia as of March 2013. During the year 2012, 1,178 unaccompanied children entered Indonesia, the highest number in recent years.The real number of migrant children is likely to be far higher since many migrants and asylum seekers—including children—do not register with UNHCR, preferring to remain out of sight and try to make their way to Australia.
