6 Districts in West Papua Province Initiating District Regulation on Customary Right

Facing the de facto claim of land that all peace of land in Papua has its customary owner and having high implication to the development about 6 Districts in West Papua Province of Indoensia are now working on developing their specific regulation on customary rights recognition. The issues of un-justice and disobeying local rights emerging a long with expansion of development and investment in this eastern Island of Indonesia and more often politically putting Indigenous Papuan as a victim with major impact in livelihoods, ecological and criminality (Foker 2009 on their Natural Resources Conflict Assessment in Papua). Securing the Indigenous Papuan rights over land, assets and participation on sustainable development would be the 1st step to open the box of poverty in the rich island. Poverty and forests linkages report in 2008 by World Bank highlighted the important of tenure reform and putting clear legal certainty over Papuan rights to escape from the long problem on poverty and natural resources conflict. A legal regulation at provinces and district level following Indonesian law system shall be provided to answer this.

They are Tambrauw, Sorong, Fak-Fak, South Manokwari, Kaimana and Bintuni Bay Districts are 6 districts that showing their interest and niece in pushing this regulation. Tambrauw is the advance one among other, that having a legal draft in place and has several time publicly discussed. Determining the vision and mission of the regulation to answer the concrete changes and overcome the problems are crucial while packing the contextually of law words. Except of Tambrauw, the other 5 district are the spot of high investment and have been plotting on the Province development plan as the investment priority areas. Almost all regulation been initiating by the parliament that link to the political mission of the head of the districts. Active supports by several CSO/NGO and local university such as Samdhana Institute, WWF, Paradiesa, AKA WUON and Papua State University for Tambrauw and Paradisea and Papuana Conservation for Fak-Fak have enable this process are working and keep progressing. 

Packing next steps should be properly manageable particularly the connectivity among this regulation with the draft regulation that the Papua People Assembly (MRP) at the provinces are now pushing. So once it is legally approved by the parliament, the content are connect each other and not creating miss-link that would implicate to law conflict. West Papua CSO/NGO collision confirmed that strong supports from CSO/NGO to this process are crucial because most of the parliament and government are having lack of understanding on this. Putting all update information and sharing national policy updates are parts of supports that they could provide.