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.