New terrain for Hivos in Aceh
Peace-building and disaster risk management are two relatively new fields for Hivos, and for the time being only in the Indonesian province of Aceh, where Hivos has been active since it was struck by a tsunami at the end of 2004.
“Shortly after the flooding, Hivos mainly provided emergency relief. But the support quickly expanded into long-term aid in the fields of agriculture, gender, peace-building and disaster risk management.” The speaker is Lieselotte Heederik. For two years, until March 2009, she was Programme Officer for peace-building at the Hivos office in Aceh.
Heederik tells how the destructive consequences of the natural disaster brought people closer together, including the government and the separatist movement GAM. A peace treaty was signed on 15 August 2005. Since then, Hivos has focused much of its attention on peace-building. “Which is logical”, says Heederik. “Hivos is committed to democratisation and human rights, both of which are conditional on peace and are maintained by peace.”
In Aceh, Hivos encourages local organisations to work together, to abandon their mutual distrust built up during the many years of war, a time when no-one was to be trusted. The organisations now jointly carry out conflict analyses, helps them to timely identify and effectively counter any threats to the peace process. Hivos also encourages collaboration in other areas.
Heederik: “Through our disaster risk management programme, citizens learn to share information with each other about the risks of natural disasters, such as floods and mudslides. They also learn to plan tasks: if such a disaster occurs, who takes care of the children, who brings the food? Natural disasters, which occur every year, can cause poor people to lose everything they have. This only serves to maintain poverty. Hivos’s disaster risk management programme helps them become less vulnerable.”
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