The Light in Children's Eyes —
and What It Means When
It Goes Out

Hartini — child rights advocate, twenty-five years of work in this field. Where does that burning passion come from?

I honestly never have a complete answer to that question. My whole foray into child rights and child protection was accidental. The truth is simply that I have always had an affinity for being around children. I am childlike myself in many ways. I am fascinated by children — by their aliveness, their directness, their capacity for joy. And I think because of that, I have always been drawn to the gaps in the system. When I see something I do not like happening to a child, I try very hard to help. And that consistency and drive — eventually that made me an activist. But I did not plan it that way.

I had been living in New York for twenty years. I came back to Malaysia in 2001, three months before September 11th — wanting a break, wanting to volunteer. I had always imagined I would work with the UN system abroad, with children in conflict zones and refugee situations. Then I started volunteering in Chow Kit. And I realised I did not need to go anywhere. What was happening to children in Chow Kit was, in many ways, worse than what I had anticipated encountering abroad. Children sleeping on the streets. Children being sold for the price of two sticks of drugs. Twenty ringgit. And I thought: I am not going back to New York. This is where I need to be.

You work with children at the pleasure of the king — children who have committed serious offences and cannot be sentenced to death because of their age, but who are imprisoned effectively for life pending royal pardon. Is our legal system equipped to understand what that actually does to a developing human being?

Absolutely not. And this is exactly the advocacy we have been doing — bringing the knowledge of child development into the justice system and asking: what does it actually do to a twelve or thirteen year old to be in prison for twenty-five years? The sentence is based on a Victorian-era legal concept. It has never been examined through the lens of what children actually need in order to develop, recover, and become productive adults.

I have worked with these young men for eleven years. I meet five of them regularly — they went in as children, and they are now young adults. Every semester they email me asking for help paying school fees. If their families cannot pay, they get transferred to institutions with fewer facilities and less access to education. So every semester I receive these emails. Ten years of emails. And we scramble together the money so that these young men can continue studying.

When they come out — because eventually some are pardoned — they have been so isolated that they do not know how to take a bus. They do not know how to use a smartphone for anything beyond what they had access to inside. They have never learned to socialise in normal settings. They go in as children and come out as adults, with a gap in their development that nobody planned for and nobody is building systems to address. We celebrate when they get out. Then we ask: now what?

Tell me about the cases that have stayed with you most deeply — the ones that shaped who you are in this work.

My first experience working with a child who had experienced sexual violence was a seven-year-old boy. And I want to be honest about what that did to me — because I think people hear about these cases and they process them at a certain distance. When you are in the room with that child, it is completely different. I have never seen a more hollow human being. There was no soul looking back at me. It was like staring into a void. I had to physically step away from the work for three months to prepare myself to go back and see that child again. I got debriefing sessions twice a week for a long time after that. Even now, I know I need them. Because I am traumatised by witnessing trauma. That is just the reality of this work, and I think it is important to say it clearly.

But what I also need to say is this: children are supposed to be happy. There is a light in their eyes when they play. When I first went to Chow Kit, the first thing I noticed was not what the issues were — it was that the light in children's eyes, as they got older, had completely disappeared. Dullness. Hardness. That is the first signal that a child is not thriving. And that observation — that specific loss of light — is what has motivated me for twenty-five years. I want that light to come back on. In every child I work with, that is what I am reaching toward.

You mentioned a young woman who sent you a thank-you message recently. Tell us about her.

I shared this story over the weekend before this recording. She is twenty-five, twenty-six years old now. I know her as the ten-year-old who the police brought to our centre. Her body was covered in scars — every inch, between one scar and the next. She had been abused by her mother and stepfather until she found the will — at ten years old — to go to a police station and report it herself. And when the police did not know what to do with her, she slept outside the station. She slept outside because she had nowhere to go, but she was not going back. And eventually the police brought her to us.

She was resettled to America as a refugee — alone, with no family, at ten years old. By herself. And she grew into the most remarkable, beautiful person. Inside and out. Despite everything. By herself.

I remember being at our centre when her mother came. The police had told the mother where the child was. She was hiding behind me — physically behind me. We had a gate. The mother could not come in. And I was standing in front of that gate yelling at the mother to leave. This child loves her mother. Despite everything. That love was still there alongside the scars. And she still had the spirit to become who she became.

When her message came — just a private thank you, fifteen years later — I was shaken in the best possible way. Because whatever happened in between, the community around her — the social workers, the people who showed up — created enough safety for that spirit to survive and grow. That is what we need. That is the answer. Not any single hero. The community. The people who are ready to help.

You are campaigning to ban child marriage in Malaysia. Where does that stand and what keeps blocking it?

I told someone in a ministry just last week: when are we going to ban child marriage? Because I genuinely do not understand the resistance. We are punishing children for having sex when we have no proper sex education program. We are villainising normal teenage behaviour while refusing to give them the information and support they need to navigate it safely. Statelessness, child marriage, children lacking sex education — these are all connected. They all stem from the same systemic failure to actually prioritise children as human beings with rights.

My goal is to ban child marriage within five years. Not a wishlist — a goal. There are enough of us moving in the same direction. But change in this space comes in waves. We push, and then there is not even pushback from the authorities. There is silence. And silence is actually worse than pushback. At least pushback tells you where you are. Silence leaves you not knowing what has been heard and what has been ignored. So we have to sustain the push. Keep going. State by state if necessary.

You have made the point that NGOs need space to do their work — that the government does not always need to be the expert. What is your message to the authorities about how to actually protect children effectively?

Very simple. Allow us the space to do our work. We are not saying we are better than you. We are saying we need to work together. We have the expertise that comes from being on the ground for twenty-five years. You have the authority and the resources to change policy. You coordinate, you license, you set the standards — but you cannot do this work alone, and you do not have to. Why are you treating NGOs as if we are anti-government? We are not. We want the same things. We want children to be safe, educated, and thriving. That goal is not political. Give us the space to pursue it together. We do not need to be the enemy in this story. There is enough work for all of us.

If you had one wish to make the planet a better place, what would it be?

Protect children. That goes without saying — protect children, uphold their rights, treat them as individual human beings.

Why are we so careless about them? We talk about climate change as the source of our inspiration and our alarm and our collective sense of urgency. And it matters — the environment matters. But children? We treat children so horribly. We make decisions every day — policy decisions, resource decisions, silence decisions — that tell children they do not matter, that their suffering is acceptable, that their futures are negotiable.

They are not negotiable. They are the whole point. If we cannot protect children, what exactly are we building all of this for? That is my wish. Protect them. All of them. Right now.

Thank you, Hartini. From the bottom of my heart. The work you do, the cost you bear, the light you are chasing on behalf of children who cannot chase it themselves — it matters more than I can say. Thank you for being on The Centered Edge.

Thank you for giving me the platform. It is always a delight to see you. And this has been important — thank you for letting me say it out loud.