VISIT
http://ecosocrights.blogspot.com The site of the
in Jakarta,
Source: http://ecosocrights.blogspot.com/search/label/pemerintah * * * Source: http://ecosocrights.blogspot.com
Updated February 2008 CURRENTLY we focus on, first, helping resolve the problems of the migrant workers from Indonesia who are mostly working in Asia Pacific and Middle Eastern countries; second, to help improve city poor people’s participation in making public decisions, and third, on malnutrition and hunger phenomenon in Indonesia. The first two programs are still going on, yet both are finishing soon. We are looking forward to conducting a review and assessment of what are the tasks of migrant worker attaches in Singapore and Malaysia. While related to site area of E. Nusa Tenggara, in which we work for dealing the issue of children malnutrition, we would soon conduct education activities on the ecosoc rights for rural communities in Manggarai of E. Nusa Tenggara. On the Indonesia migrant workers issue, we conduct research and advocacy projects: * to initiate
overall protection perspectives for the stakeholders, i.e.
On hunger in Indonesia, we focus * to conduct
comprehensive, comparative research on hunger in East Nusa Tenggara
province with case studies in four districts of W. Sumba, E. Sumba,
Southern Timor Tengah (TTS), Sikka and also the provincial capital of Kupang.
We have produced booklet containing the research result in
February 2007. Please contact us for the copy.
On the acute diverse economical, social, political problems of the Jakarta metropolitan city, the capital of Indonesia, we focus on conducting participatory research to help define innovative measures to improve city poor people’s participation in making public decisions that directly affect their life. As we know the fast growing Jakarta yet not in a discrete fashion is yet to intervene for resolving acute city problems like traffic jam and inefficiency only with taking unpopular, short-cut policy like forceful evictions. There are two main objectives of this on-going research: * To identify
main reasons why public participation of the poor is very crucial to improve
current sloppy city management,
To have clearer idea on how basically we understand the economic, social and cultural rights, we suggest you to read an article about our knowledge framework entitled "Participatory research and education of economic, social and cultural rights to help promote and enforce basic human rights in Indonesia." [Click here.] We recently publish book expounding the results of the research. You may see the introduction made by noted architect and "culture man" Marco Kusumawijaya. You may also get the book by contacting us. Click here for post on the book.** Diposting oleh The Institute for Ecosoc Rights di 3:43 PM Label: budaya, buruh migran, English-version, Kebijakan, korupsi, Liberalisasi
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POVERTY, EXPLOITATION, MIGRATION, EXPLOITATION
A Comment It was the Irish potatoe famine of the mid-1840s that drove hundreds
of thousands of Irish women, men, and children to North America.
In the mid 19th and late 19th Century, the poor of continental Europe, people from Scandinavia, Germany, Switzerland, Poland, Russia and Italy, fled unbearable conditions at home, making off to the United States... Since the 1950s, new waves of migration brought impoverished country-folk and skilled working class immigrants from Italy, Spain, Greece, Yugoslavia, Portugal and Turkey to France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Britain and Sweden. MANKIND HAS ALWAYS BEEN ON THE MOVE. ON THE OTHER HAND, CAPITALISM, AS WELL AS COLONIALIST AND NEO-COLONIALIST EXPLOITATION AND ECONOMIC BACKWARDNESS INDUCED BY COLONIAL AND NEO-COLONIAL DEPENDENCY HAVE AGAIN AND AGAIN UPROOTED PEOPLE AGAINST THEIR WILL. In modern times, migrating working people have often been subjected
to worse conditions of exploitation than "native" workers. They have been
denied essential rights as workers, as citizens, as human beings.
Comment on this!
Is dire poverty a factor explaining above average rates of migration
from E. Nusa Tenggara to the large Indonesian cities as well as Malaysia?
If so, please contact the editor of URBAN-DEMOCRACY.ORG
.
GREETINGS TO
THE PROBLEM OF HUNGER IN INDONESIA The problem of hunger in Indonesia is a social,
a socio-economic problem. It is rooted
It is a problem unknown to the rich and the powerful, the so-called elite of the country, also described at times as the 'ruling class.' And even though food price increases are starting to hurt the 'emerging middle class,' professional people (self-employed doctors, lawyers, and so on) as well as the better-paid salaried people working for bigger and mid-sized urban-based firms, or modestly 'high-ranking' government officials, let alone the middle stratum of officers in the armed forces and the police...) are still miles away from going to bed hungry. Apparently, the food question is tied to 'class,' just as the housing question, the health question, the question of education are tied to 'class.' Urban working people holding badly-paid (often, merely 'temporary') jobs are threatened by hunger. The urban poor attempting to eke out a living in the 'informal sector' are even more likely to feel the pinch. But poverty and hunger are nowhere more apparent than in the countryside. If the managers of plantations, if big landlords, if most 'notables,' if the 'aristocracy,' or upper-medium level bureaucrats stationed in the countryside are well-off, this is much less true of the average farmer. Tenants leasing small plots of land are notoriously subject to endemic hunger and malnutrition. And so are many landless laborers. In periods of draught or while food prices are driven up by speculation, the poor suffer still more. If hunger is a 'question of class,' it is also
a 'geographic question.' In countries where large segments of the masses
are exposed to hunger, the phenomenon of hunger does not spread evenly
across the land. There is not only the class divide, there is not only
the divide between urban areas and the countryside; in towns and especially
in the bigger towns, there is the divide between affluent and poor sections
of town; in the countryside, there are provinces and parts of certain provinces
that are noticeably poorer than others. In other words, the rural population
in the Indonesian countryside is experiencing different 'average levels
of poverty,' depending on their location (their province or district).
Under capitalism, uneven development is the rule. The largest concentration
of invested capital is found in a few, major, privileged locations, like
Jakarta, Semarang, etc. The rural areas closer to such 'foci' of investment,
linked to these centers of investment by better and shorter routes of transport
(usually, road and/or rail transport) are in a better situation; they are
more likely to receive substantial market-generated income, and they may
in turn attract some investment.
If today, indigenous populations in Bolivia, in Chiapas (Mexico), or in Ecuador defend diverse traditional heritages (of mutual help, of joint or communal property - the ejidios, in Mexico, for instance), they defend humanly valuable heritages. But it may be necessary to merge these heritages with answers that solve the problems of the 21st Century. It is clear that in India, or in Indonesia,
there exist positive elements of their socio-cultural heritage that should
be valued and that should not be sacrificed to the pressures of 'globalization.'
Certainly, in traditional societies, including those socio-culturally influenced by 'popular Islam' (a German 'arabist' I talked to called it 'Volksislam,' the indigenous, popularly lived and continually reclaimed 'people's culture' or 'culture of the sub-altern classes' that in countries like Egypt and Iraq is shared by Muslims, Jews, Christians and agnostics), there exist repressive and irrational customs and discursive stereotypes, but there exists also a rich variety of humanly valuable forms of interaction. One of these traditional forms of behavior has implied an obligation not to let your neighbor go hungry while you have something to eat. It is time to remember this again, and to confront it with the coldness of social relations that are an outgrowth of an economic formation which fetishizes commodities and which demands the commodification of all aspects of life. John McGregor
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