The legal literacy program in North Maluku will be intensified to improve people’s awareness of the law and fight against the high prevalence of gender-linked crimes and land conflicts in the once conflict-torn province.
Spokesman for the National Law Campaign Agency (BPHN) Kristomo Constantine said the government was satisfied with the progress the province had made in minimizing gender-related crimes, drug abuse and land disputes following the bloody sectarian conflict that rocked the province from 1999 to 2002.
He said the rampant domestic violence against women and children in North Maluku and other conflict-torn provinces such as Papua, Aceh, Maluku and Central Sulawesi had led the government to make the 2001 Human Trafficking Law, 2003 Domestic Violence Elimination Law, 2004 Child Protection Law, 2004 Psychotropics Law, 2011 Children Trial Law and the 2011 Legal Aid Law.
All subdistricts in the province have advised their residents to form 10-member groups with the main activity of holding weekly informal gatherings to learn and discuss the laws. An annual contest has also been held at the regency and provincial levels to measure the people’s awareness of the laws.
“Domestic violence and drug abuse still exists, but its prevalence has drastically dropped in the past decade,” he said after witnessing a simulation on the law-campaign program at the Kasturian subdistrict in Ternate on Thursday.
Nurdewa Safar, executive director of Daurmala, a local NGO providing legal advocacy for the poor, said gender crimes, human trafficking, rapes and land conflicts, which were rampant during and after the sectarian conflict, had significantly decreased thanks to the legal literacy program, the emergence of civil society groups and legal aid foundations.
“We have handled 120 cases in 2010, 84 in 2011 and 16 over the past 10 months [this year],” she said.
The prevalence of domestic violence and rape remains high because of a strong paternalism and the misinterpretation of Islamic teachings on marriage and the family system, which have caused men to treat women as second-class citizens, she added.
Nurdewa said in cooperation with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Daurmala had recruited a number of informal leaders, social workers and assigned them as paralegals to accompany poor people in seeking justice.
“We have also provided training for police investigators and attorneys to get a victim perspective in handling domestic violence, rape, divorce and other cases,” she said.
Anis Hamim, project manager of UNDP’s Strengthening Access to Justice In Indonesia project, said the legal literacy program was a joint cooperation with the Indonesian government to help strengthen the poor’s access to justice and improve their awareness of the law.
Ternate had a great number of poor people, especially women and children, who had been frequently denied access to justice, he explained.