Community Empowerment Facility Profile

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BACKGROUND
In the Pekurehua and Behoa valleys, the issue of land conflict has often emerged for several reasons: (1) land was taken over by force for large plantations; (2) a National Park was established by an unfair and non-participatory process; (3) refugees from the religious conflict in Poso; (4) structural overlapping of land ownership among the community members, and (5) the unfair policy on agrarian issues which lasted for about 30 years.

This conflict situation is linked to complex social problems. Among these is the high number of poor farmers' families, unemployment among youths, violent attacks on plantation entrepreneurs and National Parks office, violence between owners and non-owners of the land, and easy involvement of youths in the religious conflict in Poso.

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GOAL AND OBJECTIVES
The project is intended to help the traditional communities of Besoa and Pekurehua and the poor farmers in the sub districts of Central Lore, District Poso, Central Sulawesi Province - Indonesia. The project will be focussed on farmers in four villages with populations of about 5000, where there have been serious agrarian conflicts.  

The main objective of the project is to protect farmers' rights of agrarian resources.

Specific objectives:

• To secure indigenous peoples land claims

• To increase access of land use by poor farmers

• To eliminate land conflict among communities, the government and companies

• To build indigenous peoples and farmers organizations

Activities

Activities that will be implemented are:

Indigenous peoples and poor farmers' workshop.
The goal of the workshop is to map the problems faced by indigenous peoples and poor farmers. Specifically, the workshop will identify problems related to the agrarian conflicts currently facing the farmers, including their background, history, and origins of the conflicts. This mapping will also identify who was advantaged, who was damaged, the loss resulting from the conflicts, and the cause of these conflicts. Additionally, it will record the community responses to the conflicts. Workshops will also discuss conditions of land ownership structures in the community.

Many groups in the communities will attend the workshop, such as indigenous peoples, poor farmers, women, youth, and migrant or refugees representatives.Two YTM staff will act as facilitators.

Outputs : The community can conduct mapping studies, and formulate an action plan to solve their problems.

Participatory study for land tenure system.
This study will include several main activities: (a) census for land ownership; (b) focus group discussion on agrarian transformation; (c) carry out interviews with key persons on ancestral land; (d) undertake library research, and (e) conduct community seminars. This study activity involves four villages in the area of the project.

The aspects to be studied on the research include several complex problems, including:

• land use pattern;

• structures of land ownership;

• land ownership overlapping on the basis of ethnics, religion, education etc.;

• transformation of right and ownership on the land;

• agrarian administration;

• history of national park, large plantations and related conflicts ;

• the migration of people, including refugees because of the conflict in Poso.

Outputs: The availability of comprehensive information regarding the land tenure system of the communities.

Community based mapping

This activity will involve community-based mapping of ancestral and agricultural land. The mapping relates to land use patterns, land ownership distribution and border area each of community, overlapping of agricultural land of farmers and plantations, entrepreneurs and the National Park.

The activity will include community workshops, training for community participants on usage of topography maps, global positioning systems (GPS), compass, making field survey and map, and conducting community land agreement. Tthe presence of a community agreement is particularly needed to identify how land is used and distributed between communities will occur.

The process will be conducted using participatory approaches. The participants of these activities will include indigenous peoples groups, poor farmers, women, and youth representatives. Two YTM staff will facilitate this process.

Outputs : The community can physically map the structure of the land ownership and action formulation to abate problems.

Paralegal training for indigenous peoples' leaders and poor farmers.
This activity will train community leaders on constellation of national, provincial, and district policies of land and natural resources policies. The training material focuses on the Basic Agrarian Law, Forestry Act, and other policies on land and forestry. The training material will also include human rights aspects of political, civil, economic and cultural rights, particularly those that involve land issues. The participants in the training will include indigenous peoples' representatives, poor farmers, women, youth groups, and migrant and refugees' representatives. The process of training will be implemented through participative approaches.

Output : community leaders can understand the constellation of agrarians' policies, the agrarian itself and make action plan to settle the agrarian problems faced by the communities.

Policy dialogue on land disputes between indigenous peoples, farmers and government.
This is multi-stakeholder dialogue, specifically who are directly involved in any land disputes. The community participants will include indigenous peoples' representatives, poor farmers, women, youth, and migrants or refugees representative groups. Government officials, members of regional and local parliament, and other key decision-makers will also participate. A wide range of participants, including journalists, scholars, leaders of religious organizations, and others will attend these dialogues.

Output : The presence of understanding each other among stockholders and willingness to solve the agrarian conflict fairly.

Building farmers' and indigenous peoples' organizations.
These activities include several parts. Firstly, YTM will facilitate a congress for farmers and indigenous peoples' representatives on forming and strengthening their local organizations. The participants of the congress will be representatives from poor farmers, indigenous peoples, women, and youth groups. The congress in each village will be attended by 100 % of household representatives. An elemental form of these organizations already exists.

Secondly, YTM will facilitate a strategic planning activity for these organizations. Two YTM staff will facilitate this activity with leaders of the organizations and community representatives, on strategy planning for their organizations.

Thirdly, there will be a training activity for the leaders of these organizations, focusing on program management. Two YTM staff will be facilitate training sessions for the leaders of the organizations on program management.

Output : Communities are organized and can fight collectively to defend their interests.

• Publication (position papers, posters, sticker, etc).

The audiences of these publications are provincial, district, and sub-district, local parliament, civil society, and communities in the village.

Output : The public can understand the agrarian problems that are faced by the community.

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WHO WILL BENEFIT?

This Project is intended to help the traditional communities of the Besoa and Pekurehua and the poor farmers in sub district of Central Lore, District Poso, Central Sulawesi Province - Indonesia. The project focus will be farmers in four villages, respectively Doda and Lempe Villages in Besoa Valley, Sub District Central Lore and Wanga and Dodolo Villages in Napu Valley, Sub District North Lore, District of Poso, and Central Sulawesi Province, Indonesia. The target population is of about 5.000 people.

This Project is intended to protect the farmer's rights to their agrarian resources, so that it could guarantee the indigenous peoples' claims on their land; to increase the poor farmers on their agrarian land; to eliminate land conflict among communities, government and entrepreneurial; and to strengthen the farmers by building the farmer and indigenous organizations.

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CONCLUSION

This project will give opportunities for the community and government to build an agreement about managing the conservation areas based around community. The communities will be more proactive to be the part of conservation area management, because participatory management will give an advantage to the community on the one hand, and protect the natural environment on the other.

It also makes possible for women and men to sit together, without discrimination, in the process of public decision-making. Because of the community importance of both women and men, this project depends on involving both to study the development of their communities.

The project will have an influence in decreasing the violence actions that are carried out by poor farmers' families, because they will have an opportunity to posses the agriculture land; and it will also have a positive influence on the strained situation among the different ethnic and religious groups, and classes, among communities.  

This project will also increase the economic life for the community, because the community will be freer to manage agricultural land, due to the guarantee of certain rights to the land; and because poor farmers will have now the opportunity to possess agriculture land.

The project success will be a good lesson learned for the other communities in this area. Because all the communities almost have the same problems, the successes of this project could be replicated in the other village in that area. Therefore, the chain effect from this project could be realized.

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