Behind Transformation: The Right to Food, Agricultural Modernisation and Indigenous Peoples in Papua, Indonesia

Abstract

The norms and ideals of human rights are increasingly invoked by civil society organisations to construct claims related to land tenure and access to food, particularly to challenge a massive expansion of agricultural investment in a developing country. While this has facilitated negotiations on rights and the formulation of claims, studies that investigate to what extent such endeavours achieve the transformational goals advocated by human rights proponents or in particular whether they have been successful in instigating any institutional reform in the governance of massive agricultural modernisation projects are scanty. After discussing a national agricultural modernisation project, the Merauke Integrated Food and Energy Estate (MIFEE), set up in Merauke, Papua, the article concludes that the analysis of the transformative role of human rights requires a prudent examination of the role of the State in the negotiation process, the patterns of socio-cultural interactions signifying the political setting and the pressure experienced and perceived by actors that affect the issues selected and omitted.

An Examination of the Noken and Indigenous Cultural Identity: Voices of Papuan Women

“…The population of Merauke is nearly 250,000-73,000 of whom are Indigenous to the land (Indonesian Population Census, 2010). The Merauke Integrated Food and Energy Estate, known as the MIFEE project was implemented by the Indonesian government in 2010 (Hadiprayitno, 2015). The local government of the Merauke Regency in collaboration with the state government set up the MIFEE project to overcome the food and energy crisis in Indonesia.…”

“…Since the 1960s, Indigenous Papuans have undergone a massive transition due to the loss of their native lands to intensive agriculture and other development schemes (Hadiprayitno, 2015;Stott, 2011). This transition resulted in very limited gains in the lives of Indigenous people of West Papua (Stott, 2011) and is underexplored in academic research.…”

“…The noken has a longstanding history in Papuan culture. However, since the implementation of economic development projects, Papuans are finding natural materials, once easily accessible from the forest, more difficult to obtain (CIFOR, 2014;Hadiprayitno, 2015). There has not been an empirical examination of the noken in West Papua that centers the voices of indigenous women.…”

Deadlock and Denial: Domestic Challenges and the Institutionalization Human Rights in ASEAN

“…66 Moreover, human rights are not yet instrumental in designing and assessing the process and outcomes of development and the management of natural resources. 67 Against such a complexity, understanding the process of implementation of human rights in Indonesia demands an understanding of whether the failures of protecting right holders are actually resulting from the lack of commitment to enforce human rights, or the evolution of the State's role in adapting to new conditions or rules of the game for policymaking according to human rights standards.…”

A Common Sense Approach to the Right to Food

“…The rich literature on the food sovereignty movement grants important insights into the content and meaning of the right to food in indigenous and peasant societies involved in activist networks, and also into the process of translation or vernacularisation (see, for instance, Shawki 2015). Other cases, such as the struggles over an agricultural modernisation project affecting the Merauke people in Indonesian Papua, highlight the process of vernacularisation of the right to food through workshops and meetings between civil society groups and indigenous community members (see Hadiprayitno 2015). But howif at allare these rights conceived before the translators and intermediaries get to work?…”