
Ahmad Taufan Damanik
Chairperson of the Indonesian National Human Rights Commission (2017-2020)
Ahmad Taufan Damanik is the Chairperson of the Indonesian National Human Rights Commission. Ahmad Taufan Damanik has been working in the advancement of Children’s Rights since 1986 by establishing Yayasan KKSP (KKSP Foundation) which specialized itself in addressing issues of children’s rights, alternative education for children, child labor advocacy, children suffering sexual exploitation, trafficking and others. Together with Anti-Slavery International, Terre des Hommes Germany, Vivere and other international organisations, he actively campaigned against cases of children who work on fishing platforms which was considered as one of the worst form of child labour. He and his teams successfully won the case through ILO Mechanism in 1998, which resulted in the banning of child labour on fishing platforms by the Government of Indonesia. For his efforts, Ahmad Taufan Damanik was nominated to receive the International Child Rights Award. His active involvement in child’s rights has brought him to his current position as the Vice-Chair of the ASEAN Commission on the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Women and Children (ACWC) as well as the Indonesia’s Representative for Children’s Rights to the ACWC since 2010. He is also an active member of IFM-SEI, an international organization for child’s education in Brussels, Belgium, Asia ACT (Asia Anti Child trafficking) and the International Coalition for the Elimination of Child Soldiers. He was the coordinator of Southeast Asia Working Group for CRC Monitoring (1999-2003) and the Presidium of the National Coalition for Non-Governmental Organizations for Monitoring Children’s Rights in Indonesia. In addition to his work in child’s rights, he is also a lecturer at the Department of Political Sciences, the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, North Sumatera University, Medan. He completed his Masters of Arts in Political Theory from University of Essex, UK, in 2004.