UN Rights Meeting

What is the use of sending a big delegation to UN Rights Meeting in Geneva next March? For Papuan it is a real good gesture from Indonesian government to include representatives from Papua.

Here is the related news from Jakarta Globe:

Supersized Delegation Attending UN Rights Meet

It’s not a matter of who has been invited to attend the United Nations Human Rights Council Assembly in Geneva from March 2 to 27, but who hasn’t.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Monday that as well as its own delegation, it had asked for representation from the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights; the Coordinating Ministry for Political, Legal and Security Affairs; the Coordinating Ministry for People’s Welfare; the Attorney General’s Office; the Ministry of Home Affairs; the National Police; the Indonesian Armed Forces; the Ministry of Social Affairs; the Ministry of Religious Affairs; the Constitutional Court; and the Judicial Commission.

On top of that the ministry said it had also extended invitations to the provincial governments of West Kalimantan, Papua, West Papua and Aceh.

Wiwiek Setyawati Firman, the ministry’s director for human rights and humanitarian affairs, said the invitations to the provincial administrations were part of government attempts to ensure that human rights conventions were applied at the local level.

The government ministries and other bodies, as regulators and law enforcers, would ensure the implementation of these rights in Indonesia, she said.

“We hope that we will also develop a national sense of belonging to the central government’s human rights drive,” Wiwiek said, adding that local authorities needed to understand that the central government’s compliance with UN treaties needed to be tweaked to meet local needs.

“We want to make sure that the law they enforce [is done] fairly,” Wiwiek said, citing the example of the outdated colonial-era Criminal Code.