Southeast Asian governments need to give more freedom to civil society organizations (CSOs) to prevent terror acts in the region, a workshop heard Wednesday.
It said that CSOs could play an active role to help governments raise public awareness about terrorism and to ensure that counterterrorism efforts respect human rights.
"Unfortunately in some parts of the world, including the Southeast Asia region, there are countries that do not allow civil societies to act freely by restricting their funds or limiting activities," codirector of the US-based Center on Global Counterterrorism Cooperation, Alistair Miller, said.
"If you let civil societies do their work, sometimes by criticizing the governments that monitor human rights, better governance to prevent terrorism is encouraged."
Dozens of CSOs from Southeast Asia gathered for a two-day workshop on "Raising awareness of UN global counterterrorism strategies among civil society groups in Southeast Asia" in Jakarta on Wednesday.
The workshop was jointly organized by the country's largest Muslim organization Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and the Center on Global Counterterrorism Cooperation.
Miller said CSOs could promote dialogue and greater tolerance among civilians and religions, and were effective ways to address and combat terrorism.
He said that since 2001, many of the world's governments, including several countries in Southeast Asia, had developed counterterrorism strategies that had a negative impact on innocent civilians and undermined human rights.
"We still focus on multilateral military strategies to address and prevent terrorist acts," he said.
Nahdlatul Ulama chairman Hasyim Muzadi said the Indonesian government needed to improve its education system to avert extremist action.
"Extremism is the opposite of the meaning of Islam," he said.
He said the NU had implemented an education system in Islamic boarding schools on the basis of a balance between figh (Islamic formal law), da'wah (guidance) and tasawuf, promoting ethics and human rights.
"The NU currently has 11,000 Islamic boarding schools but none are involved with terrorism," he said.
Director general of ASEAN at the Foreign Ministry Djauhari Oratmangun said CSOs played a crucial role, including in the rehabilitation process of terrorist-attack victims, to further combat terrorism.
"Indonesia actively involves CSOs to combat terrorism. We listen to their input to battle it," he said.
He said that because terrorist threats exist, CSOs should work hard to communicate about terrorism with locals in remote areas that the government could not reach.
He said that in terms of ASEAN, CSO's human rights commissions were behind ASEAN.
"The CSOs can campaign for the establishment of a human rights commission in the region. We are on the right track now to combat the terrorism," he said.
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