wfn.org | [PCUSANEWS] Where the heart is

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Note #8449 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

04347
August 4, 2004

Where the heart is

PC(USA) partner serves new Indonesian 'underclass' of IDPs

by John Filiatreau

MANADO, Indonesia - The government declared in January that Indonesia no
longer has any internally displaced people (IDPs).

The 500,000 Indonesians who live in crowded camps and barracks far from their
ancestral homes are now officially "poor" or "vulnerable" persons, not IDPs.

That means they no longer qualify for emergency government aid.

It also means they must lean even more heavily on Stien Djalil, a program
officer for Church World Service (CWS) to whom they go for everything from
farm tools to a shoulder to cry on.

Djalil doesn't have time to quibble over semantics. She and her young
assistant, Vanda Lengkong, are the final "safety net" for many of the 34,000
(ex-)IDPs living in a dozen refugee camps and in other temporary quarters in
her province, North Sulawesi.

The CWS workers aren't getting much help these days. Most other
non-governmental organizations (NGOs) with humanitarian missions to IDPs have
pulled up stakes, apparently accepting the government's claim that the
emergency is over.

In June, Djalil and Lengkong escorted a visitor to three government-built
camps in and near Manado, the ostensibly temporary homes of 450 families who
cannot return to their villages in North Maluku because of continuing
Christian-Muslim violence there.

The camps aren't visible from the main roads. They're tucked away in muddy
little clearings hacked out of the jungle - makeshift villages where families
live in plank-and-thatch houses barely bigger than coffins. Unemployment
approaches 100 percent and most residents have no income at all.

The IDPs are people uprooted from their homes and transplanted to areas that
couldn't be more alien. "Welcome to my boat," one woman greeted a group of
visitors as she lounged with her children on a shaded wooden platform in the
jungle. It was a rueful, longing reference to the fishing business her
kinsmen lost when Christian-Muslim violence forced them to leave their island
and move to this land-locked "village."

Manado is a busy, prosperous city at the northern tip of the big island the
Dutch called Celebes. Twenty years ago, 80 percent of its 200,000 citizens
were Christians. It now has twice that many residents, and the
Christian-Muslim split is about 50-50. Author J.M. Nas wrote two decades ago
that Manado was "in the process of change from a mainly Christian to a
predominantly Muslim city."

The region surrounding Manado is called Minahasa, which means "becoming one"
- a reference to the fact that its various ethnic groups formed an alliance
centuries ago for protection against pirates on the Sulawesi Sea.

Even in its current congested state, Manado is often held to be the prettiest
city in Indonesia. Small wonder it keeps its ugly underbelly under wraps.

"People look around and say, 'This is very nice, it's beautiful here,' and
think we have no problems anymore," Djalil says. "We must make them see what
they don't see - that the need here is still very great."

Although the camps are surrounded by a palmy jungle that might have been
painted by Paul Gauguin, they're hardly paradisiacal. Some IDPs have refused
to move into newly constructed camps because they lack such basic services as
water, power, sanitation facilities and security from crime.

Not all IDPs live in camps. Thousands - no one knows how many - board with
relatives, rent rooms from other families, move into abandoned buildings,
squat on public lands or live as wandering nomads in the jungle.

In Ambon, more than 5,000 IDP families living in public and government
buildings were told earlier this year that they had to move by the end of
this month.

Church officials in Ambon led a tour of an IDP center on the ground floor of
a school where as many as 30 people live in a single room. Each family is
assigned a 5-by-7-foot sleeping mat on a concrete floor. Twice a week, the
Protestant church brings in two 120-gallon containers of water - for bathing,
cooking and drinking - to be shared by more than 250 people. In the entire
camp, there are two fetid, closet-sized toilets. And two Bibles.

The IDPs packed into the Ambon school, like those in the Manado camps, are
Christians whose homes were burned by Muslim mobs - but Indonesia also has
thousands of Muslim IDPs.

 The lives of many IDPs are literally sickening. According to researchers
from the World Food Program (WFP):

* Lengthy stays in temporary housing have a negative impact on family health;

* Most IDPs have untreated emotional traumas;

* Women and children are particularly vulnerable to illness;

* Most households have little "food security," meaning that they don't know
where their next meal will come from;

* Most IDPs don't have access to latrines and trash bins;

* Many families are in need of such basics as bedding, blankets and clothing.

The United Nations Commission on Human Rights says that "the vast majority of
the internally displaced are women and children." About two-thirds of IDPs
are under 18 years old. More than half of IDP children are under-nourished.

CWS Indonesia - a partner of the Presbyterian Church (USA) and a frequent
collaborator with Presbyterian Disaster Assistance (PDA) - is the IDPs'
lifeline in Minahasa, providing, in addition to "basic life-saving relief
supplies and services," drinking water, sanitation systems, nutritional
supplements, agricultural materials and tools, health services and trauma
counseling.

Since launching the program in 2001, CWS has focused on IDPs' short-term
needs, assuming that most would not be in the camps for long. In fact, most
IDPs spend two years or more in temporary quarters. About two-thirds of the
1.4 million Indonesians displaced since 1999 have returned to their home
islands or resettled elsewhere. Many of those who remain cannot return
because of continuing violence.

CWS thinks most IDPs in North Sulawesi are "unlikely to return to their
respective places of origin" because of continuing Christian-Muslim violence
in the Malukus. A United Nations assessment team found in a 2002 study that
most IDPs in camps near Manado "did not desire to return."

The annual budget for the Manado CWS operation is a paltry $120,000.

In June, Djalil said she wasn't sure the program would be funded again, even
at that level. "We will leave it in God's hands," she said. "God will
provide, as he always has in the past."

CWS is a humanitarian ministry of the PC(USA) and 35 other Protestant,
Orthodox and Anglican denominations. Another PC(USA) mission partner, Action
by Churches Together (ACT), a global alliance of 195 Protestant and Orthodox
churches and church-related aid agencies, also has provided emergency
assistance to IDPs in Indonesia.

Djalil, 62, took the CWS position after serving for many years in a similar
capacity for the National Council of Churches of Christ (NCC). The IDPs are
not her only concern. In June, for example, when a volcano on remote Sangihe
island erupted, she and Lengkong, a college student and prospective ministry
candidate, were dispatched to Sangihe to assess the needs of the 30,000
people who had to be evacuated from 16 villages in the danger zone and housed
in churches and schools in safer areas.

In their absence, the CWS-supported programs were managed by "cadres" Djalil
and her colleagues have recruited from among the IDPs and trained as health
and nutrition workers, trauma counselors, disease-prevention experts and
small-business operators. CWS programs are intended "to meet human needs and
foster self-reliance for all whose way is hard."

Although CWS provides assistance to "those most in need, without regard to
political or religious creed," the majority of the IDPs in Manado and nearby
Bitung are Christians. (Most Muslim IDPs from North Maluku fled to the island
of Ternate.)

Djalil is no stranger to "displacement" and suffering. In the 1960s, she was
imprisoned for a year (and tortured by interrogators) because her husband was
a student activist regarded as a threat to the Suharto regime.

That the IDPs are "poor" and "vulnerable" is not in doubt. A 2002 survey by
the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) found that the IDPs' poverty rate
is about three times the national rate of 19 percent, and that IDPs also
report higher rates of unemployment, malnutrition and sickness. WFP said 55
percent of the 5,500 families it surveyed were living in poverty, and 90
percent had illnesses in their households.

The agency warned that the IDPs are becoming a new Indonesian "underclass."

"Statistics like these sound the alarm for the future of the displaced people
in Indonesia, particularly women and children," a WFP spokesman said. "These
problems need to be solved now, before they have a chance to harden into a
second generation."

The second generation is very much in evidence in the camps, which are
crawling with beautiful brown-eyed babies and children.

Promised "termination payments" from the government - lump sums to be used
for resettlement after regular government aid was cut off - have not always
made their way to the IDPs, "either because of a lack of funds or because of
misuse of that money," according to the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC).

With the revocation of official IDP status, the national government has
washed its hands of the problem, shifting responsibility for helping the
"vulnerable" to provincial and district governments.

CWS distributes thousands of tons of rice, vegetable oil, "multi-nutrient
sprinkle" and WSB (wheat soy blend) gruel; distributes mats, blankets,
cooking utensils and mosquito nets to needy IDP families; and sponsors
"food-for-work" projects in which camp residents build such facilities as
footpaths, culverts, water channels and bridges.

It also offers health and sanitation training for food vendors and midwives;
distributes "hygiene kits" and educational materials, including information
on HIV/AIDS; supports water and sanitation projects; provides seeds,
agricultural tools and fishing gear; provides emergency housing materials;
sponsors special nutrition programs for babies and lactating mothers;
organizes "support groups" for IDPs; manages an early-childhood enrichment
program; provides trauma counseling as part of a broad program of
"psychosocial-mental health" activities; and makes "micro-loans" (of $10-$15)
to would-be entrepreneurs.

All materials used in CWS projects are purchased locally, and the agency
actively seeks partnerships with local organizations and churches. Programs
and activities are tailored to the clients' cultural and ethnic backgrounds.
Many are managed by IDP "cadres," who are paid a token wage.

The programs are supported in part by funds contributed by PC(USA) members
and congregations through special appeals, Extra Commitment Opportunity (ECO)
gifts and the One Great Hour of Sharing offering.

In the Indonesian language, one term, pengungsi, is used for IDPs and
refugees, but there is a crucial difference: International conventions
safeguard the rights of persecuted people who cross borders and become
refugees, but there is no legal instrument protecting those who are forced to
flee their homes but who stay within their countries' borders. These people -
IDPs - must rely mostly on the international humanitarian community for moral
and financial support.

The Jakarta government has identified three possible outcomes for IDP
families: peaceful return to their "places of origin"; "empowerment" to begin
life anew in the communities they adopted as IDPs; and resettlement with
government assistance in other parts of Indonesia.

The first option is best for all concerned, but in many cases returning is
out of the question because the violence that caused the displacement is
still going on.

The second option, empowerment, sounds good but seldom happens. "Empowerment
is a good alternative if the host communities are ready and willing to accept
IDPs - which, in most cases, they are not," Michael Elmquist, a former chief
of Indonesia's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA),
said two years ago.

"The only remaining option ... is resettlement in new sites," he said. "For
budgetary reasons, the government hopes that only a small number of IDPs will
avail themselves of this option, but, in reality, it is the only one
available for most of them."

Elmquist, noting that IDPs are often regarded as a drain on scarce local
resources, added: "So far, the government's resettlement policy has not been
a complete success. Much more community involvement is needed in order to
ensure that the relocation sites and houses are of a standard acceptable to
IDPs, and that the sites are sustainable and accepted by the surrounding
population."

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