Samsidar

Samsidar is rebuilding community ties in Aceh, where the social fabric has been devastated by thirty years of armed conflict, military rule, and natural disaster. Samsidar links women victims with each other to promote healing, and then helps them to reconnect with their families and other women in the community as they rebuild their lives.

Samsidar believes that Acehenese women victims of conflict and disaster have the capacity not just to survive, but to rebuild their lives and thrive. To do that, they must begin to heal, both individually and collectively, to recover trust, and to regenerate their community’s infrastructure. Samsidar helps women design solutions to problems resulting from years of displacement and erosion of social trust. She begins by bringing together the most vulnerable women—those who live in displacement camps and have experienced a high rate of domestic violence and sexual assault, often at the hands of police and military authorities. Women recount their experiences to their peers, prioritize their values and needs in terms of recovery, and receive help to reach those goals. Samsidar fosters peer-to-peer support groups that help women build temporary houses, secure an education for their children—many of whom have dropped out of school—and begin to recover economically. Samsidar supplements local resources with highly targeted assistance from her colleagues in the citizen sector.

Samsidar knows that it is particularly powerful for women in the camps to receive support from those who have not lost their homes or experienced the same level of devastation. As former neighbors reunite and rediscover what they share in common, the more fortunate neighbors often begin working to document the police and military brutality their sisters have experienced. Samsidar is cultivating ordinary people’s ability to become paralegals as a way to lobby for the rights of women victims in the legal sphere. Together, they are rebuilding bonds of trust, solidarity, and interdependence.

Samsidar supplements local efforts to rebuild community ties with efforts to develop lasting institutions and influence national policies. She has restored the local institution of Balai Syura Ureng Inong Aceh, a traditional public space for women. The National Commission on Violence Against Women has adopted her victim-based mechanisms for reporting and documenting civil rights abuses and is beginning to spread her methods to other parts of Indonesia. Samsidar is also developing a referral system so that police, citizen organizations (COs), and health providers can coordinate with one another to serve the needs of women victims.

Aceh has been wracked by armed conflict for over thirty years. In 1989, the government began enforcing a Military Operational Zone in response to the Free Aceh Movement, sparking ten years of repression and terror, including widespread killing and the harassment of tens of thousands of people. After the fall of Suharto, evidence of these abuses came to light, and Aceh’s status as a military zone status ended in 1998. However, due to sporadic clashes during the general election the following year, the government intensified its security operation in Aceh and sent additional troops to the region. This prompted worse clashes involving not only the military forces but also militias. Tens of thousands of people fled their homes in fear, creating an internal displacement crisis. In May 2003, the government declared another military emergency in Aceh. Although that status was downgraded the following year to civil emergency, the conflict and associated civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights abuses continued. People who were accustomed to checking in on their neighbors stopped when that simple act became too risky. The situation grew worse as hundreds of thousands of survivors of the conflict were displaced in the aftermath of the tsunami disaster of 2004. The international aid that followed the tsunami brought additional challenges with it, since many construction projects were undertaken without community input. The Helsinki peace accord (2005) included a settlement between the Free Aceh Movement and the Indonesian government that allowed Aceh’s provincial government to implement Sharia law, which has widespread implications, particularly for women.

Years of violence and turmoil have perhaps affected women the most. Thousands of women became widows or lost their homes. Others were detained, raped, or harassed. The challenges of basic survival during conflict and natural disaster, extreme poverty, and changes in family and community structures meant that women’s role in society has often been reduced to that of victim. But the problems facing women in Aceh predate the conflict; gender discrimination is deeply rooted in Acehnese society.

Women who have been raped or sexually abused often suffer from social exclusion in addition to psychological trauma. There is a culture of stigma and women may re-victimize other women by blaming victims for bringing crimes on themselves. To avoid social and sometimes political stigma, families often pressure victims to undergo “blind”/forced marriage or forced divorce. While gender-based violence occurred during and after the conflict and in camps for the internally displaced, no cases have been brought to court, rather, they are dealt with traditionally. As an apology, families of victims often receive traditional compensation in the form of money or cows from perpetrators. But as a result of the ongoing conflict and disaster in Aceh, many have lost trust in their communities and traditional systems. This has resulted in a lack of community cohesion and a reduction of solidarity among women, which makes reconstruction and recovery even more challenging.

Many of the efforts to assist the people of Aceh as they heal have neglected the key role women victims play in creating social transformation. For Samsidar, these women are central. She starts by talking with them in a sensitive, restrained way, which generates trust and personal confidence and allows them to articulate and name their needs. Samsidar has found that those needs fall into four main categories: To be believed when they tell the story of what has happened to them; to see their perpetrators brought to justice; to recover economically and physically; and, to be safe. When they are ready, women living in barracks begin to recount the sexual violence they have suffered. This process helps them recover psychologically and gain the trust of their peers, who also tell their own stories. If they choose to seek legal redress, Samsidar prepares them to present evidence in court, either as victims or witnesses. So far, twenty-five women have helped to uncover 191 women’s rights violations throughout Aceh.

To repair community support systems, Samsidar focuses on rebuilding essential woman-to-woman and women-to-institution relationships. Through her organization, Women Volunteers for Humanity (RPuK), Samsidar develops volunteerism among women’s rights activists and women victims, who come together to form a peer support group. RPuK also connects these women to external resources that can help them meet their everyday needs. As part of that effort, hundreds of women from five districts in Aceh have come together in savings and loans groups. Concerned about their children, many of whose schools have been destroyed, the women have recruited new teachers. RPuK facilitates teacher trainings, and the women provide feedback about curriculum and performance. Women in the displacement centers also support one another in reaching goals. For example, they manage their food budgets so efficiently that they have saved enough money to build several temporary houses, either in their old villages or in new compounds. Together, participants in these groups—both women and men—prioritize the order in which people will receive new houses, based on need. Other COs and funding agencies have since replicated this model.

In addition, Samsidar and her colleagues are rebuilding the Balai Syura Ureng Inong Aceh, traditional public spaces where women were involved in public decision-making processes. During decades of conflict and disaster, many of these institutions were destroyed or turned into mosques and taken over by men. Samsidar is currently lobbying aid agencies and the Aceh Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Bureau, which tend to focus on infrastructure, to help rebuild the Balai Syura. She hopes that reconstructing these spaces will give women the psychological and physical spaces they need to heal.

With the help of an Achanese legal aid organization, Samsidar is paving the way for women in displacement camps to become paralegals. One of her tactics for providing alternatives to Sharia law has been to bring in Muslim academics from Aceh’s religious centers to train women to work as paralegal assistants. The academics are highly respected in the community and provide strategic support for women’s voices. RPuK also uses the radio to educate the public on legal matters. These activities have helped the women support one another and build a sense of solidarity. They no longer fear leaving their homes to visit one another, something they didn’t dare do before.

To ensure the spread and sustainability of her work, Samsidar has successfully incorporated her framework for victim-based reporting and investigation into the National Commission against Violence on Women’s strategy. Her methods have become national policy and are now being replicated in the conflict-ridden area of Poso, where Samsidar has trained women victims to investigate and document crimes and rights violations. Her approach to reporting is currently being piloted by the Indonesian Ministry of Welfare in camps for displaced people in North Sumatra, Jogya, and Maluku. Internationally, the Asia Pacific Forum for Women on Law Development, which works with tsunami survivors across Asia, has asked Samsidar to share her strategy. Samsidar hopes her continuing role as a special rapporteur for Aceh at the National Commission on Women will help her promote locally derived solutions to national and global problems.

Samsidar was born in Banda Aceh. During her childhood, she and her ten siblings moved frequently as her father (a policeman) was transferred from town to town. From her family she learned humanist values, despite her aristocratic background. After her father died in 1973, her mother became the head of the family. Her mother teaches Koranic verses and is actively involved in the anti-polygamy movement. In primary and high school, Samsidar received scholarships based on her academic talents. She went to a public university, where she majored in agriculture and joined a student club that promoted sustainable food crops and protected traditional plants. Samsidar was also active in student social activities.

Following her graduation in 1990, Samsidar went to work as a researcher at the Agriculture Department of Syah Kuala University and as a lecturer at the Gajah Putih University. She also began working on a project funded by the Indonesian and the Dutch governments, to promote coffee cultivation for small landholders. Samsidar was assigned to work with women coffee farmers in Central Aceh. This project taught her about the gender-based discrimination that had marginalized women farmers, who grow and cultivate coffee only to have men sell the crops and control the family-income. With these women, Samsidar tried to find ways for them to earn a decent income. First, the women collected the coffee beans from the ground underneath the coffee trees and sold them. Later, they began to plant and cultivate their own coffee trees. Little by little, they were able to earn enough money to set up a cooperative. Eight years later, the Women Workers’ Cooperative has 1,200 participants and financial assets of 400M rupiahs (US$39k). The coop empowers women economically, promotes a broad view of women’s role in Islam, and advocates for victims of domestic violence.

During her struggles in the women’s movement, Samsidar has always been on the front lines of social transformation. She has started several women’s associations that serve women’s needs in the areas of economic empowerment, gender policy advocacy, and farmer’s issues. In addition to her current role on the ethics commission overseeing reconstruction efforts in Aceh, Samsidar serves on the boards of the LBH APIK of Aceh and the RPuK. Despite great personal risks, Samsidar, a Nobel Peace Prize candidate, quietly but tenaciously pursues solutions.