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When special autonomy funds for Papua end
The Papua conflict, among the longest in Asia, has continued for over five decades, with many lives lost as well as material losses
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The Papua conflict, among the longest in Asia, has continued for over five decades, with many lives lost as well as material losses. A decade ago under Muridan Widjojo (now deceased), the Papua Research Team of the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) published the Papua Roadmap: Negotiating the Past, Improving the Present, and Securing the Future, which was then updated in 2017.
The roadmap identified four roots of the problems in Papua: marginalization and discrimination against indigenous Papuans, development failure, contradiction between history and political identity, and lack of accountability for past state violence against Indonesian citizens in Papua.
Though not entirely new, these findings confirmed that the Papua conflict, however small in scale compared to, for instance, the past armed conflict in Aceh, was extremely complicated and certainly not easy to resolve.
The government has adopted various strategies to end the conflict, ranging from the security approach to special autonomy, particularly the “Otsus” (Special Autonomy for Papua Province) policy since the administration of president Megawati Soekarnoputri. The Otsus Law grants special authority for Papua — and later, West Papua province — to regulate and manage the needs and interests of Papuans based on local initiatives and to protect the basic rights of Papuans.
Since 2002, the government has also disbursed the special autonomy fund to the provinces, coupled with additional infrastructure funds of up to Rp 110 trillion (US$7.67 billion) This special autonomy fund has increased consistently every year, starting from only Rp 1.3 trillion in 2002 for Papua — when West Papua was not yet established — to approximately Rp 8.1 trillion for the two provinces in 2019, according to the Finance Ministry.
This flow of cash, however, will end in the next two years in accordance with Article 34 of Law No. 21/2001, which states that the special autonomy fund is only valid for 20 years. So what should the government do before this special autonomy fund terminates in 2021?
A good start would be to comprehensively evaluate the funding scheme and the implementation of special autonomy in Papua and West Papua. An assessment is crucial to uncovering conclusive answers as to why the long and expensive special autonomy efforts have failed to bring about significant changes in Papua.
Since 2011, the two provinces have had the lowest Human Development Index (HDI) in Indonesia. In fact, Papua’s HDI only changed from low to medium a year ago, after almost two decades of Otsus.
Papua’s poverty rate is also one of the worst in the country. Papua is home to almost a million poor people and over 6,000 underdeveloped villages, according to this year’s figures from the National Development Planning Ministry.
Furthermore, The Asia Foundation and LIPI’s research have found that the HDI and poverty are worsening in areas with more indigenous Papuans.
Beyond welfare and economic development, the Otsus Law covers other issues that, according to LIPI, are the roots of the problems in Papua. The law regulates and offers solutions for the problems of political history, marginalization and discrimination, as well as violence and human rights violations.
Nevertheless, many of these regulations, especially those related to human right violations and political issues, have not been implemented, and more surprisingly, conflict with other legal rules. Although the Otsus Law is fairly comprehensive, it has failed to end the Papua conflict. Unsurprisingly, the Papuans symbolically “returned” Otsus to the government in 2005 and 2010 because of its inability to solve the problems in Papua.
A comprehensive evaluation would reveal why Otsus failed to end the conflict and provide insight for improving on future strategies. New schemes could include maintaining special autonomy with modifications and fresh approaches.
Based on the research and advocacy activities we have been running for more than a decade, LIPI has consistently proposed a dialogue approach to end the Papua conflict.
Though some may have given up on this approach, dialogue between Papuan groups and the government is still the only tool to build mutual trust, commitment and legitimacy to achieve resolution without violence. It could be an alternative for filling the gaps that special autonomy cannot.
This does not necessarily mean seeking a single representative group of Papuans as with the Aceh conflict. Dialogue should attempt to be as inclusive as possible, involving actors from different elements in both the central and local governments and in Papuan society. It also can be carried out in stages, with preliminary limited internal meetings among local actors and among government institutions.
The government must decide on its next steps in conflict resolution this year, ahead of the looming deadline for the end to the special autonomy funds. Whatever the decision, we hope it will bring prosperity and peace to the land of Papua.
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The writer is a researcher at the Indonesian Institute of Sciences Center for Political Studies (P2P LIPI), a member of the LIPI Papua Research Team and a co-writer of Updating Papua Road Map: Peace Process, Youth Politics, and Papuan Diaspora (2017). She obtained her master’s degree at the State University of New York at Albany.
