T

he Foreign Ministry has reaped a number of successes in its lesser known roles by resolving several outstanding border disputes to keep Indonesia’s sovereignty intact.

“We have engaged in our ‘diplomacy for sovereignty’ with the aim of protecting the NKRI,” Foreign Minister Retno LP Marsudi told reporters on Thursday, using the Indonesian acronym for the Unitary State of the Republic of Indonesia.

“This kind of diplomacy is carried out through negotiations on land and maritime borders. They will be further intensified to spur progress, because it is of great importance.”

Over the first three years of President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s administration, the ministry has made considerable progress in consolidating the country’s borders. In 2015, the government participated in nine maritime border talks with the Philippines, Malaysia and Timor Leste and 14 land border negotiations. Indonesia has land borders with Malaysia, Papua New Guinea and Timor Leste.

Indonesia also appointed veteran diplomat Eddy Pratomo as a special envoy to negotiate borders with Malaysia, answering directly to the President. The special envoy’s role is to make progress on talks that have stalled at the technical and legal levels by seeking a political solution.

Last year, Indonesian negotiators had 10 meetings about maritime borders and 16 about land borders. This year, the government finalized all bilateral border negotiations with Singapore and concluded an agreement with the Philippines to delineate a shared exclusive economic zone (EEZ).

As of October, there have been 11 maritime and 17 land border consultations in 2017.

“We have agreed to sign a memorandum of understanding for the survey and demarcation [of borders] between North Kalimantan province and the Malaysian state of Sabah,” Retno revealed. “We are also in the final stages of land border talks with Timor Leste.”

Indonesia and Timor Leste have been negotiating their common border since the latter was declared independent in 2002.

Pejambon, the area in Central Jakarta where the Foreign Ministry compound is located, has made a commitment to further deal with Indonesia’s unresolved border issues, partly because there was a need to reinvigorate talks with several countries that have stalled since 2003.

“Border talks often take a long time, but we remain resolved to continue them with the conviction that there will always be some progress,” Retno said in her three-year review of Indonesian foreign policy at the Pancasila Building in Pejambon.

From early this year, Retno peddled a “good neighbors make good fences” mantra as one of Indonesia’s foreign policy priorities, as the country wants to set a good example by concluding border disputes in Southeast Asia.

In particular, the simmering tensions among ASEAN states and China in the South China Sea have posed a challenge to ASEAN’s unity. China has made sweeping claims over the resource-rich global trade route and is at odds with Malaysia, the Philippines, Brunei and Vietnam.

Indonesia, while not a claimant in the dispute, has taken defensive measures over its EEZ bordering the South China Sea, rechristening it the North Natuna Sea.

Retno also highlighted Jakarta’s forays into humanitarian diplomacy in Myanmar and its long-lasting support for the Palestinian struggle for independence, as well as the minister’s personal commitment to protecting Indonesian citizens abroad.

While experts have openly urged Indonesia to take an even greater role in leading ASEAN, the minister still insisted on using collective decision making and stealthy diplomacy.