Indonesia - Third National Community Empowerment Program in Rural Areas Project : indigenous peoples plan (Vol. 1 of 2) : Indigenous people policy framework

IPP418 Safeguard Policy Issues INDONESIA: Third National Program for Community Empowerment in Rural Areas (PNPM Rural III) Indigenous People Policy Framework 1. The project's Guidelines and Operation Manuals are the equivalent of an Indigenous Peoples Policy Framework itself. The social assessment and FPIC is the first part of the project processing by the targeted community itself. The mechanism prior to sub-project identification, village proposal decision, and sub-project design involves: social and poverty mapping, priority discussion among villagers, special women meeting which will produce 2 out of 3 village proposal to be submitted for funding; and all done through focal group discussions, a facilitated wide village meetings, and review of safeguard issues which must be anticipated in the village proposals document. 2. Overview - Indonesian communities covered by the World Bank's policy on indigenous people can generally be classified as falling in to one of three categories. First, there are small pockets of highly isolated, vulnerable groups such as the Mentawai or other small island populations. Such groups can easily be adversely affected by development projects because of unfamiliarity with modern market mechanisms, cultural and administrative prejudices against them, or inability to retain control over productive and natural resources. 3. A second category refers to the much larger ethnic populations which meet most of the World Bank's typological requirements (own language, sense of identity, traditional attachments) but exhibit varying degrees of vulnerability. Populations such as the so-called Dayak of Kalimantan or the tribal groups of Nusa Tenggara Timor fit here. But, even the Balinese fall within this category ( Balinese adopts dual government system: traditional village governance (desa adat) and official village government; made possible by the Regional Autonomy Law # 22/1999 (revised to Law 32/2004) which gives the Balinese to return to the regional, exclusive, traditional village governance (desa adat). 4. The third group refers to heterogeneous communities, where a segment of the population is culturally or economically marginalized. Several of the fishing populations of the eastern islands, for example, have unique identities and also occupy subordinate positions within local social structures. 5. Indigenous people's concerns are met primarily through the design of the project itself since the whole point of demand-driven investment funds like PNPM Rural is to allow local decision making over how development resources get used. 6. There are four particularly important concerns in how the project approaches indigenous communities: (i). developing dissemination and facilitation materials in collaboration with local communities (issues of language, graphics, etc); (ii). using appropriate, inclusive self decision-making mechanisms in environments where indigenous groups are politically and culturally marginalized; (i.e. the Papua Program); (iii) finding a balance so that groups (i.e. women) excluded from traditional institutions can also join project processes; (iv) Since KDP, the project included several adaptations to address concerns that marginalized indigenous groups are especially vulnerable to problems of elite domination and corruption [by recruiting and training of facilitators from these communities, providing special logistical support for geographically and socially difficult area, having two village facilitators (a man and a woman) trained and mentored to allow them to gradually in charge for village meetings under PNPM Rural planning and accountability meetings, village proposal writing team and village implementation committee comprise village elected team, etc]. 7. Participatory consultation takes place in the formation of inter-village (MAD) and sub-village (MD) community meetings, proposal verification teams at the village and sub-district level, and preparation of the sub-project proposals and implementation of sub-projects. Environmental screening and mitigation measures are identified and agreed among the beneficiaries during the preparation of the sub-project proposals. Similarly, the need and mechanisms for obtaining land are identified and agreed among the beneficiaries through participatory consultations during the preparation of sub-project proposals. Facilitation and verification of the process and documentation included in the sub-project proposals are done by the facilitators. 8. Disclosure is mandatory, and project conditionality includes village-level disclosure of operational rules, including safeguard rules. PNPM does not involve any state expropriation; all decisions, including safeguard-implying decisions, are by village level consensus. 9. Review of Experience - As a project that begins from starting principles of grassroots participation and flexible project designs determined through local planning, KDP approach (adopted by PNPM-Rural) did not anticipate any significant adverse impacts on indigenous or culturally distinct populations and none have been found during project supervision. Test cases specifically supervised for this purpose have included the Baduy, on Java, who as a rule reject outside development projects, and indigenous communities on the island of Nias, near West Sumatra. In both cases KDP practice proved highly adaptive. In Baduy the project did not enter until it was approached by traditional leaders and the terms of encounter negotiated and recorded by both sides. In Nias, KDP initially experienced several implementation problems because of its isolation and the deeply hierarchical village structures, but again no adverse impacts could be identified. Ongoing post-tsunami reconstruction is closely supervised by the Bank through the closely linked KRRP (KDP Recovery and Rehabilitation Project) funded by the Multi Donor Trust Funds (MDTF) for Aceh and Nias and, again, no adverse impacts have been identified on any of the indigenous communities. General supervision in the eastern islands also failed to turn up any systemic adverse impacts on ethnic minorities. Specific measures in the project design that appear to promote culturally appropriate activities include the villager's own election of their representatives to the project, use of sub-village planning units, and flexibility in facilitator's operational funds that allows them to support traditional rituals. 10. The project design itself has also proven to be somewhat more flexible than anticipated when it first started. Thus, in provinces such as Aceh or West Sumatra, where kin-based descent units also carry out important administrative functions, the project produced special guidelines that used these traditional units rather than the standard kecamatan and village structures. (Both provinces benefited in this respect from the 2004 decentralization laws). Needless to say, in parallel with the increased use of culturally apposite forms of social organization has come an entirely new generation of problems associated with the people excluded by traditional social structures, such as, for example, women, immigrants or low status groups. These problems do not have easy solutions. For the moment the primary means for addressing them is through better facilitation, with some trials (i.e. in Aceh) to work with traditional leaders on making their group's workings more inclusive. 11. Special Program for Papua - The full Papua program is summarized in the "social" analysis part of this PAD. This section will deal only with the part relevant to safeguards. By way of summary, PNPM-Rural meets the OP's policy requirements on informed participation. 12. KDP has been active in Papua since its inception. As in other areas, the program in Papua has the goal of empowering villagers to undertake their own development through a process of village and kecamatan-wide meetings with the facilitation of consultants. Villages have undertaken the construction of infrastructure as well as group economic activities. Local governments have been eager to expand PNPM- Rural activities, funding all kecamatans with village-level funds than any other province. 13. As noted previously, to ensure a longer-term flow of benefits to rural communities even after PNPM finishes, PNPM-Rural in Papua also includes a large training program for promising graduates from the indigenous communities, who will be trained for six months in civil engineering before joining PNPM. Eight full-time coaches have already been assigned to Papua to provide the engineering students with operational oversight and practical supervision. A second program developed in partnership with the British Council that provides for extended training in social facilitation for Papuan facilitators has graduates its first 50 facilitators.