Abstract
Aceh had endured nearly 30 years of armed conflict when the tsunami devastated its coastline and up to five kilometres inland. The scale of the disaster and the need for cooperation amongst diverse stakeholders in the peace and recovery effort prompted a renewal of peace talks in the months following the tsunami, which led to a historic Memorandum of Understanding between the Government of Indonesia (GoI) and Gerakan Aceh Merdeka (GAM; the Free Aceh Movement). Three years after the tsunami, and two and a half years after the signing of the MoU that had brought peace to Aceh, this paper analyses Aceh from the perspective of both post-disaster and post-conflict recovery. From the case studies presented it will emerge that, while post-tsunami recovery efforts in Aceh have, in many cases, attempted to address existing inequalities by ensuring that as many citizens as possible benefited from the increase in available resources, in other cases, aid delivery was not been based on local needs and realities, in particular those caused by the 30-year conflict. In international circles and in many on-the-ground post-tsunami efforts, the social impact and political economy of Aceh’s longstanding conflict went almost completely unnoticed. This has implications for the durability of Aceh’s post-disaster efforts.
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Notes
- 1.
Brown (2005), citing Aceh Sumatra National Liberation Front (ASNLF), 1976. For further reading on the background to the conflict, see also Reid (2006a, b). Barron and Clarke (2006) detail other antecedents to the conflict in Aceh, including strong Islamic faith and Aceh’s connection to the world of the Indian Ocean rather than the Java Sea which influenced the development of a distinct Acehnese identity.
- 2.
Miller also notes that the central government was concerned that, ‘the Acehnese would abuse their increased self governing powers to continue struggling for eventual secession’ (2006, 304).
- 3.
See Agarwal and Panda (2005); correlating immovable property ownership and immovable property (land or a house) with both physical and psychological violence based on household surveys in Kerala (India), the paper concludes that women owning immovable property are found to face a significantly lower risk of marital violence than property less women; and UNCHS (Habitat) 1999: access to land, housing and property is one of the principle factors determining the economic and social well-being of women, especially in situations of conflict and reconstruction, when their rights are violated on a mass scale.
- 4.
Other estimates are much lower, for example, Bappenas (2005) estimates that only 9% of landowners in Aceh had formal land certificates before the tsunami.
- 5.
‘Building Back Better’ has been a regular theme in discussions about Aceh’s reconstruction since former President Bill Clinton, UN Special Envoy for Tsunami Recovery, presented this challenge on his first visit to Aceh in 2005.
- 6.
Note however, that BPN later refused to use the CDA process due to concerns over the legal validity of this process.
- 7.
For an explanation of why the issue of land title certificates has been slow, see Oxfam (2007c).
- 8.
Three years after the tsunami, many housing providers had already left Aceh or were planning to conclude their activities in 2008. BRR planned to finish all activities before April 2009.
- 9.
For further analysis on the influence of custom on women’s rights to land, see Agarwal (1994).
- 10.
Research conducted in other parts of Indonesia suggests that married women are at particular risk of losing rights to land through processes of systematic land titling.
- 11.
In Aceh, for example, the World Bank was implementing a Mediation and Community Legal Empowerment (MCLE) programme, the UNDP had a Legal Awareness Raising Campaign (LARC) in Aceh, and the International Development Law Organization (IDLO) had two projects: Community Mediation and Legal Awareness Raising, and Raising Awareness of Women’s Rights through Film.
- 12.
Land and housing can be owned separately under Indonesian law.
- 13.
Personal correspondence with BRR, 1 April 2008.
- 14.
A number of reasons have been given for this division. In some cases, international organizations were obligated (or at least felt obliged) to spend money in post-tsunami areas as most donations to them were received from private individuals on the basis of the tsunami campaign. It is also possible that because the conflict remained active, at least in the initial period after the tsunami, most international agencies were not permitted to work in areas that were not affected by the tsunami. Although this did not remain the case, it is likely to have made agencies wary.
- 15.
Article 183.
- 16.
MoU, Art. 3.
- 17.
. See, for example, Erawan (2007) (discussing that while decentralization was aimed at making local governments more responsive to local needs, decentralization has had varying success throughout Indonesia; this is explained by the differing capacity of local actors to respond to political, societal and institutional conditions in their localities).
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Dunlop, J. (2018). Land, Natural Resources and Sustainable Development in Aceh, Indonesia: Confronting Inequalities Through Post-tsunami and Post-conflict Recovery. In: Reddy, S. (eds) The Asian Tsunami and Post-Disaster Aid. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-0182-7_7
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