Rights agenda: Taking cues from Geneva

Rights agenda: Taking cues from Geneva

Endy M. Bayuni, The Jakarta Post, Geneva

While Indonesia takes the international center stage this year
with one of its senior diplomats assuming the chair of the United
Nations Commission on Human Rights, far more important is it for
the nation to further its human rights agenda at home.

In spite of significant progress made since the nation
embarked on its reform journey in 1998, Indonesian diplomats and
human rights campaigners attending the commission's 61st annual
session are under no illusion that the problems back home are
anywhere near being resolved.

But they all agree that the appointment of Ambassador Makarim
Wibisono, the head of Indonesia's Permanent Mission to the United
Nations here, will give the necessary impetus for the government
and human rights groups to further the domestic human rights
agenda, even if just a tad.

One of the major sticking points, they agree, is Indonesia's
failure to ratify the two covenants on human rights: the UN
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the UN Covenant on
Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

"These are the two baboons," Eddi Hariyadhi, who heads the
Indonesian delegation to the UN's annual six-week session on
human rights, says.

Many of the principles enshrined in the two documents are
already adopted in the amended 1945 Constitution and in various
laws. So politically and technically, there should not be a
problem for the House of Representatives to endorse their
ratification.

"It's just an oversight," Eddi says. "They should be ratified
soon."

Indeed, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has apparently
agreed to send the document to the House for ratification this
year.

Still, Indonesia's non-ratification of the two umbrella
conventions on human rights could weaken Makarim's leadership of
the Commission on Human Rights over the next year. Certainly, he
will be speaking with less authority than the case would be if
Indonesia had already adopted the two most important
international covenants on human rights.

Indonesia has already ratified a number of UN conventions
relating to human rights -- including on children's rights, on
the elimination of discrimination against women, against torture
and elimination against racial discrimination -- and it has
signed but not ratified the convention on the protection of
migrant workers.

Ratification of these conventions has consequences for the
country: It has to adjust its laws accordingly, and it has to
present periodic reports to the United Nations Secretary-General
on its compliance.

"You can't pick and choose which rights you want to protect
and promote," Makarim says. "Human rights are indivisible."

The new spirit and commitment shown by Indonesian official and
non-official representatives in Geneva, however, is not always
fully reflected back in Jakarta.

While the government may feel that, when it comes to
international legal instruments, it has made significant progress
in the protection and promotion of human rights, the country is
still dogged by various problems, and they are not simply
legacies of the past Soeharto regime, but some new ones have come
up.

The latest one is the September murder of Munir, Indonesia's
leading human rights campaigner, who was poisoned while on a
flight between Jakarta and Amsterdam.

The United Nations takes the killing of human rights defenders
very seriously so that it is one of about 10 major items on the
commission's agenda. And sure enough, Munir's death found its way
into the forum.

Courtesy of the International NGO Forum on Indonesian
Development (INFID) Munir's wife Suciwati testified before the
commission last month, calling for its attention and for it to
put pressure on the Indonesian government to speed up the
investigation and bring the killers to justice. So far,
investigators have named a number staff of Garuda Indonesia --
the airlines where the murder by poisoning is believed to have
taken place -- as suspects in the murder.

INFID, a regular participant in the annual Geneva gathering,
also raised the issue of human rights abuses in Aceh and Papua,
two major trouble spots in both planks of the archipelago, in
this year's gathering.

Acknowledging the progress Indonesia made in the last six
years, INFID's delegate Rafendy Jamin says Munir's killing and
the continued human rights violations in Aceh and Papua show that
the commitment of the government on human rights is slackening.

"We seem to be reverting to the old days," Rafendy, a veteran
of 14 years in the commission's session, says.

Senior Indonesian diplomats attending the session are more
upbeat about the prospects in Indonesia, and are already looking
beyond the pending cases -- which they believe will be resolved
in time -- and beginning to prepare the nation's next human
rights agenda.

They recognize that while individuals have inalienable human
rights, the state, upon which the obligation to ensure their
rights falls, has limited resources to meet its duty.

This is where technical cooperation comes in, according to
Eddi. The state capacity can be bolstered through such
cooperation with the United Nations and developed countries.

Eddi says one area where the human rights agenda should be
furthered is in the right to education and the United Nations
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) can
facilitate in the provision of such rights.

The flip side of seeking outside help to build the state's
capacity -- in the recent past at least -- is that Western
developed countries would only extend such assistance provided
that the recipient country liberalized its markets and economy.
That had certainly been the case with the United States' approach
to Indonesia.

"We can negotiate on that," Eddi said.