World Bank allocates $8m to Aceh
World Bank allocates $8m to Aceh
Agencies, Jakarta
The World Bank has allocated US$8 million to a community assistance program in the once violence-ridden province of Aceh in an effort to deepen the peace process, reports said on Sunday.
The aid is a follow-up to an international conference last month in Tokyo that focused on the reconstruction of Aceh in light of the peace accord signed Dec. 9 by the Indonesian government and the Free Aceh Movement (GAM), World Bank officer Scott Guggerheim told Antara news agency.
World Bank Indonesia representative Andrew Steer, U.S. Ambassador Ralph Boyce, EU representative Italian Ambassador Francesco Maria Greco and Japanese Ambassador Yutaka Iimura flew for the Aceh capital of Banda Aceh, on Sunday to assess the province's development needs.
A host on international donors on Dec. 3 pledged to help the province get back on its feet once the Indonesian government has signed a peace pact with the GAM separatists, theoretically ending a 26-year-old struggle for Acehnese independence.
The World Bank expects to double its annual aid to the resource-rich province of four million people to more than $15 million once the program gets underway in earnest.
"The World Bank will expand its support though its existing program in Aceh to promote participatory development - a delivery mechanism which has been proven to be successful in reaching the poor," Steer told a recent news conference.
World Bank aid is expected to focus on working with local communities to rebuild schools, clinics and irrigation systems in Aceh's 5,000 villages, many of which have had no access to international aid for years because of security concerns in the province.
More than 10,000 people have reportedly died in Aceh over the past decade as a result of clashes between government and GAM troops as well as torture and revenge killings.
GAM's struggle for independence has been driven primarily by a sense of injustice over the way in which the petroleum-rich province has been exploited to the benefit of the Indonesian government, with little direct economic dividends enjoyed by the Acehnese, according to observers.
The success of the peace deal rests on hopes that the 90 observers - including 30 international officers - currently in the province will be able to monitor violations of the accord.
"We are seen as a non-state player that is independent," Martin Griffith, head of the Geneva-based Henry Dunant Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, which brokered the peace deal and is providing monitors said as quoted by AP. "That is an important factor."