Southeast Asia’s largest nation is expected to compete with Japan, China, South Korea, Iran and the Marshall Islands for one of four seats on the council available to Asia-Pacific countries for the 2020 to 2022 period.

“We are optimistic because our modalities are quite good although our competitors must also have their own campaign engines,” the ministry’s director for human rights, Achsanul Habib, said during a regular press briefing in Jakarta on Thursday.

Achsanul explained that Indonesia had gained global recognition for its human rights activism overseas due to long-standing initiatives at home and in the region.

“For instance, we were among the first of the Asia-Pacific countries to have a national commission on human rights. We also pushed for the establishment of the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights [AICHR],” Achsanul said, referring to national and ASEAN-level initiatives established in 1993 and 2009, respectively.

Indonesia was also an initiator of the permanent human rights mission at the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), he added.

Jakarta is expected to lean heavily on its past experiences sitting on the Human Rights Council, having been a founding member in the initial 2006-2007 period before being reelected three more times in 2007-2010, 2011-2014 and 2015-2017.

Achsanul said Jakarta would likely get support from OIC member countries, ASEAN and the European Union, as well as state groups from Latin America and Africa.

Indonesia was also planning to approach Australia for support in the council election despite recent tensions between Jakarta and Canberra over the latter’s plan to move its embassy in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Both Israel and Palestine claim Jerusalem as their capital, but Indonesia insists the status of Jerusalem needs to be negotiated by both parties in a final peace deal.

The human rights watchdog has in the past been criticized, including by former UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon of South Korea, for being disproportionately focused on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. It has the power to engage in UN special procedures, which gathers expert observations and advice on human rights issues in all parts of the world.

Indonesia’s campaign for the UNHRC candidacy officially kicks off on Feb. 25 when its top diplomat attends a high-level meeting on the council in Geneva, Switzerland, for three days, Achsanul said. Among the issues Retno is expected to raise are Myanmar’s Rakhine crisis and continued rights violations against Palestinians.

The official said, however, that the minister would not discuss the issue of Papuan separatism, which had reemerged after 16 government-linked employees were killed by rebels in Papua in December, a marked escalation from decades of sporadic skirmishes between armed guerillas and the Indonesian military.

Last month, the Pacific island nation of Vanuatu pulled a stunt at its Universal Periodic Review session at the UNHRC, allowing an exiled separatist to infiltrate its official delegation to hand over an alleged petition to Michelle Bachelet, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

The UN had backed a 1969 referendum allowing Papua to come under Indonesian rule.

The UNHRC candidacy is Indonesia’s second at a high-profile multilateral platform in as many years, after last year’s resounding win against the Maldives for a seat on the UN Security Council.

Indonesia has repeatedly come under fire over the government’s unwillingness to resolve past human rights abuses, especially in Papua, a glaring contrast to its strong rights activism overseas.

Wirya Adiwena from The Habibie Center think tank called Pejambon’s push for candidacy at the UNHRC “a good development”.

“It shows our foreign affairs machine is still working well in promoting Indonesia’s standing despite having what sometimes [seems like a] disinterested president,” he said, referring to President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s averseness to foreign policy.

However, Wirya said that securing a candidacy at the council would not likely result in a boost to promoting human rights at home. “It involves very tricky power relations that require domestic political will, which does not seem to be strong [in the] current political environment.” (tjs)