INDONESIA’S NEW HUMANITARIAN DIPLOMACY

Posted by AsiaViews | Jan 17, 2018 | 0 |

Once a recipient of foreign aid, Indonesia is now set to provide the same help to other countries in need. In her annual foreign policy statement recently, Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi announced the establishment of ‘Indonesia Aid’, an agency that she says will be responsible for delivering social and economic assistance to people and places stricken by conflict and natural disasters.

Indonesia was one of the first countries to offer humanitarian assistance in the wake of last year’s massive refugee outflow from Myanmar’s Rakhine state into neighboring Bangladesh. Last month, construction began on the Indonesian Hospital in Mrauk U, 70 kilometers north of Sittwe on the Bay of Bengal, as Indonesia continued to act as the driving force behind the ASEAN Humanitarian Assistance Center in Rakhine state.

It isn’t just Myanmar. Last year, Marsudi signed an agreement with the Afghan government to build a health polyclinic inside Kabul’s Indonesia Islamic Center complex, where an Indonesian mosque now stands.

Working with a modest budget of Rp1 trillion (US$70 million), Indonesia Aid represents Indonesia’s commitment to strengthening South-South and Triangular Cooperation (SSTC), by partnering with 31 countries in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and the South Pacific in the fields of food security, fisheries, agriculture, as well as small and medium enterprises and micro-finance.

In the Pacific region, Indonesia has engaged in capacity building and humanitarian assistance, especially where tiny island nations have been struck by typhoons and other natural disasters.

But how does all this gel with the fact that Indonesia is still an aid recipient, such as from Japan and the World Bank. The volume of assistance has been considerably reduced over the years as the economy increasingly comes to rely on trade and investment, but it is also a fact that 10 percent of the country’s 250 million population still live below the poverty line.

Still, as long as the level of poverty continues to decline (it fell by two percent in 2016), Indonesia can afford to continue doling out modest foreign assistance as a member of the G-20, a grouping of the world’s 20 richest nations. After all, with its economy currently ranked the 16^th largest in the world, Indonesia is clearly emerging as a global leader with an important role to play in encouraging democratization in Southeast Asia. ***

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EXTRICATING NDONESIAN CHILDREN FROM ISIS INFLUENCE ABROAD

Indonesia urgently needs to revisit the possibility of repatriating the neediest of its young citizens stranded abroad, whose families had earlier joined ISIS. Most of these children are in camps in northern Syria but there are also small numbers in the Philippines, Afghanistan and Iraq. “Extricating Indonesian Children from ISIS Influence Abroad”, the latest report from the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict (IPAC) argues that the government could begin by bringing back small groups of unaccompanied children under ten years of age, who pose minimal security risk and are most vulnerable to deteriorating conditions in the camps.“The problem is that health and security conditions are worsening by the day in the Syrian camps, and the children are growing older,” says Dyah Kartika, IPAC analyst. “They need access to schools, a nurturing environment, and medical attention. If the government waits too long, the children will be further exposed to ISIS ideology.” The new report examines a 2019 list of Indonesians in camps and prisons run by the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). The Indonesian government has been trying to verify their citizenship, but with pseudonyms, misspellings and bad transliterations, it is a daunting task. At the time the data was collected, between March and June 2019, there were 555 Indonesians in SDF camps and prisons, including 367 children. Among the children, approximately 277 were under the age of ten and 34 were unaccompanied. In June 2021, there are fewer than ten children who are both unaccompanied and under the age of ten that could be prioritized for return. Bringing back children of ISIS families is no easy task. The report analyses the main challenges faced by the Indonesian government. These include definitional issues, bureaucratic competition, the difficulty of verifying nationality, evaluating the toll of exposure to conflict, assessing security risk, and finding relatives or others willing to provide care once the children are returned. In addition, COVID has meant stringent restrictions on travel, placing further obstacles in the way of repatriation. There are several models for rehabilitation of children exposed to violent extremism in Indonesia that could be modified to accommodate the needs of children repatriated from abroad. The report examines these models and argues that the government does not need to have every detail of rehabilitation programs in place before it starts extricating children from ISIS influence. It can start by bringing back the most vulnerable children and then modify programs as needed.

“It’s important that the government see these children as victims” says Dyah. “They deserve a chance to be children again.”

INDONESIA’S NEW HUMANITARIAN DIPLOMACY