Indonesian delegation hails Istanbul declaration

By T. Sima Gunawan

ISTANBUL, Turkey (JP): Indonesia welcomed over the weekend the Istanbul Declaration and the Habitat Agenda for the improvement of human living conditions.

"There are many things we can learn from them," Soemadi Brodjodiningrat, a member of Indonesian delegation, told reporters Saturday.

Good governance is one of the issues Indonesia needs to seriously address, he said.

The Declaration said that in the implementation of the Agenda, the governments must promote, within the legal framework of each country, decentralization through democratic local authorities, and ensure transparency, accountability and responsiveness to the needs of people.

Brodjodiningrat, Director General of Foreign Economic Relations at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said that Indonesia agreed to the principles of a good governance as discussed in the conference.

"What we object to is any attempt to interpret good governance as a particular system of government, like the American democracy," he said.

The conference, which started on June 3, was attended by 10,700 participants from 171 countries and almost 20 heads of states or governments. According to the participation list, Indonesia had the second largest delegation with 82 people, after Turkey.

Indonesia adopted without any reservation the Istanbul Declaration and the Habitat Agenda at the end of the second UN Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat) last weekend.

The Habitat Agenda is a Global Plan of Action which will serve as a guideline in the drafting of policies for sustainable human settlements.

Indonesia has long put human settlements on top of its national policy, Brodjodiningrat said. He referred to the sandang, pangan, papan (clothes, food and housing) as the three basic needs on the country's priority list of economic development.

For the first time at a UN conference, Habitat II allowed local authorities, NGOs, parliamentarians, academicians and researchers to take part. Even though the Conference did not adopt their recommendations, they agreed to take them as an annex to the Habitat Agenda.

Brodjodiningrat said that the annex could be a helpful reference for the governments in the drafting of their policies, even though it is not binding.

"It's good that the conference gave room to them to raise their ideas and involve them formally and structurally as a partner," he said.

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