Women's Rights in Aceh after the Tsunami

Audubon Dougherty, UUSC's communications assistant, is traveling in Indonesia to visit communities affected by the tsunami.

Upon arrival in the city of Banda Aceh, we jumped right into meetings with grassroots organizations working in conjunction with HIVOS. UUSC provides financial support to many of these smaller groups and will soon be funding more. Hearing about the scope of their work was eye-opening.

Gender rights continue to be at the core of effective human rights-based relief strategies after the tsunami and the signing of peace accords in August 2005. The issues Acehnese women face now are incredibly challenging: land inheritance rights, income generation, and losing their husbands as a result of either the tsunami or the political conflict in Aceh.


Advocating for women in Banda Aceh

Wanti, director of Bungoeng Jeumpa, a grassroots groups working on women's rights, told us how her organization advocates for women's education, health, and economic rights, especially inheritance rights. Of primary concern is women affected by the conflict. With all the international attention of nongovernmental organizations, tsunami survivors receive more financial support, educational scholarships, food rations, and access to health care than women conflict survivors.

Bungoeng Jeumpa as well as Peoples' Crisis Center are two organizations supporting all women -- including widows and their children -- affected not only by the tsunami but also by the political unrest in Aceh which is now calming down under the ceasefire agreement. The organization doesn't have the capacity at present to deal with all the property rights cases, so their primary focus is providing legal assistance and advocacy, working with Muslim leaders to settle conflicts over inheritance issues through Sharia law.


Later that evening, we met with Herlina, a young woman who had to drop out of the university after the tsunami. She decided to voluntarily live in the barracks (temporary housing) with widowed survivors. There, she acts as an Islamic guru (teacher) for the children and advocates for the inheritance rights of women survivors as part of her work with Peoples' Crisis Center.

It was 11 p.m., when we dropped her off, but she invited us in to see the small room she shares with another woman, the woman's child, and the child's friend, an orphan. Everyone talked in whispers so as not to wake the little girls sleeping on the floor. We drove away in awe of Herlina's intelligence, compassion, and commitment.

Visiting PASKA on another intensely humid day

The next day, after a four-hour drive to Sigli in the Bireuen district, we visited Faridah from PASKA, another grassroots group focused on women's rights. Her organization has done an impressive, meticulous job collecting data about women pre- and post-tsunami. Governmental organizations generated reports on the number of widows and orphans after the tsunami, but these numbers are much smaller than what Faridah's group has been finding. This is largely because heads of villages were hesitant to reveal all the names of widows to government officials, since many of these widows had husbands who were suspected to be part of the political resistance (GAM), and some of the women themselves were former GAM members.

Faridah showed us stacks of detailed reports, which include women affected by the tsunami and those left widowed or homeless by the conflict. "The data speaks the reality," she said, "but white people don't see the houses burned, all the loss that happened as part of the conflict. Why doesn't this reality speak to peoples' hearts?"

She was also adamant that, unless relief is extended to conflict victims, the peace process -- and all the progress achieved through tsunami relief -- will collapse. "People are beginning to feel that they'd rather have no peace and food than peace and no food."

Our hope is to help Faridah translate and publish these important findings and allow her organization the leverage to provide hands-on support to the thousands of women left behind after both the natural and man-made disasters.