|
Ibu Titi Sumbung, executive director of the Indonesian Center for Women in Politics (ICWIP) is a formidable woman. Blessed with an unstoppable energy and a disarming charm, she is a well-known and popular figure in Indonesian civil society. Ibu Titi, who has spent the last four decades of her life as a women’s rights activist, is also a lawyer and a Masters graduate in public policy from Harvard. She spent several years being a mother and housewife she says, and then “went back to school after 20 years.”
After returning from Harvard, she and other fellow activists set up ICWIP in 1999 to address the lack of female representation in politics and in the decision-making processes that formulate public policies in Indonesia. Read more...
Grassroots Women Speak Out Against Discrimination
Eight women sit in a circle on the floor; they sit cross-legged on straw mats, talking animatedly while they drink tea and munch on local sweets. They are discussing news they have just received about some new cases of ‘diskriminasi’ taking place in a village in the next regency (district) over.
They have heard that one village in the regency of Bulukumba in South Sulawesi has begun enforcing new local regulations that impose a strict dress code on women and restricts their rights. The new rules require that all women must abide by the baju muslim (Islamic dress), and wear the jilbab (head scarf) if they want access to public services including healthcare. They have heard cases of women actually being turned away by administration officials. Girls, even as young as six or seven, must also don the jilbab to attend school. Read more...
Young Journalists as Anti-discrimination Advocates
Aliansi Jurnalis Independen or AJI is an independent alliance of journalists, first set up in 1995 in Jakarta, in response to what many Indonesian journalists at the time felt was a growing, ‘uncomfortably close’ relationship between government and the media. Believing that the Persatuan Wartawan Indonesia (Association of Indonesia’s Journalists), the large, mainstream media association, was encouraging less and less independent reporting, they established an alternative network that would not only promote media independence, but also tackle some of the more controversial issues that they felt more conservative journalists might avoid.
Today AJI has more than 1000 members all across the country, all between the ages of 25 and 40. The network has a youthful, dynamic vibe and has embraced new media such as the internet and alternative radio. Read more...
CEDAW Champion – Ibu Tenri Olle Yasin Limpo, Secretary-General of ADKASI
Indonesia consists of 33 administrative provinces, each with their own political legislature and governor. The provinces are further subdivided into regencies and cities, and then again into subdistricts, which themselves are made up of several villages.
Since the advent in 2001 of a regional autonomy and decentralization process, administrative and legislative decision-making has devolved from the central government in Jakarta, to provincial, district and village levels with the aim of improving government functions, use of economic resources and public services for local communities. Regencies and cities therefore have become key administrative units, responsible for providing the majority of public services, while at the grassroots level, decisions made by village officials have the greatest impact on the daily lives of Indonesians. Read more...
CEDAW Champion – Ibu Sri Danti, Deputy for Gender Mainstreaming, Ministry of Women Empowerment
Indonesia’s Ministry of Women Empowerment (MOWE) is the national government agency tasked with promoting and protecting women’s rights. The organization monitors state obligations to CEDAW, and works to implement the provisions of the Convention, the Beijing Platform for Action and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) through promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment in the government’s policies and programmes.
MOWE is also responsible for gender mainstreaming throughout the government, since a presidential decree in 2000 stipulated that all government representatives and agencies mainstream gender in their policies, programmes and budgets to eliminate gender discrimination. Read more...
Regency Council Leaders Share Views on CEDAW
Regencies in Indonesia are local administrative units that sit just below the provincial level. They are governed by local parliaments in the form of Regency Councils. The number of members in each council varies depending on the size of the regency and the number of subdistricts and villages they contain.
An umbrella organization called ADKASI, the Association of Indonesian Regency Legislative Councils, regularly convenes meetings of regency councils from all over Indonesia, and provides training and capacity building for local parliamentarians on a range of governance issues. Read more...
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
CEDAW in Action in Indonesia
