main findings integrated - 221210

Chapter 4RESEARCH FINDINGS

The findings of the impact assessment of the LEAD Project in Central Sulawesi, Southeast Sulawesi and North Maluku will be presented based on the category of project results discussed in the LEAD Project Document. Those expected results of this Project include increased legal awareness of target claim holders, strengthened capacities of target claim holders to access justice and strengthened legal service community, strengthened justice sector reform efforts.

The findings are supported by the results from the quantitative research (the survey) and qualitative research. Findings from quantitative research are mostly representing the impact of the LEAD Project generally in the three Provinces, although some main findings are analyzed based on more specific categories, such as provinces, gender and education level. Meanwhile findings from qualitative research provide confirmation and explanation for the quantitative results. Case studies highlight the magnitude of certain results.

I. ON THE INCREASED LEGAL AWARENESS OF TARGET CLAIM HOLDERS

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Main Findings

Legal awareness strengthened. Beneficiaries’ legal awareness is strengthened. The indications are the larger percentage of beneficiaries compare to non beneficiaries who have “high level” of legal awareness, the higher mean score of legal awareness of the beneficiaries compare to that of non-beneficiaries

The magnitude of impact varies. The impact was more significant in strengthening attitude toward access to justice than strengthening basic legal knowledge, on strengthening access to formal justice system and on rights related to gender-based violence, and on the awareness of women and low-educated people.

Influencing factors. The network and capacity of CSO as well as the strategy of socialization used by the CSOs have made an important contribution to the successfull efforts

The challenges. Among others, sustainability of the legal awareness process at the village level, legal capacity of duty bearers to conduct legal awareness, and the capacity of government to provide justice services are the challenges faced by the Project to maintain the impact.

Immediate result. Citizen as claim holders started to access appropriate forum to seek justice over a grievance.

Legal awareness is a necessary prerequisite in promoting access to justice, especially for poor, disadvantaged and marginalized citizens who are often the least able to assert and protect their rights. During its three years of implementation (2007-2010), the LEAD Project has been focusing in strengthening the legal awareness of the beneficiaries of the project by providing legal knowledge and information. Such knowledge and information include issues related to citizen’s rights over government services, gender-based violence and discrimination, citizen’s rights over the ownership and management of land and natural resources, as well as the rights of citizen to have legal assistance and protection.

Legal awareness activities carried out by the CSOc (Civil Society Organizations) under the LEAD Project in three provinces have shown a remarkable impact across sectors on the beneficiaries’ legal awareness compare to the control group who did not received such legal empowerment services, the non-beneficiaries. This impact is indicated by two results from the survey. First is the larger percentage of beneficiaries compare to non beneficiaries who have “high level” of legal awareness.1 Second is the higher mean score of legal awareness of the beneficiaries compares to that of non-beneficiaries.2

1. BENEFICIARIES’ LEGAL AWARENESS WAS STRENGTHENED

Legal knowledge is critical to securing community’s access to justice. Legal knowledge lays the foundation of an attitude toward access to justice, while attitude lays the foundation for a legal action in case of a grievance. With this framework, beneficiaries’ legal awareness is assessed in terms of their legal knowledge and their attitude on the issues of access to justice. Assessing legal awareness through these two categories has helped this research to assess the magnitude of knowledge received through the Project. While beneficiaries’ legal knowledge describes their understanding over general issues on rights, beneficiaries’ attitude toward access to justice describes their standpoint of what to do hypothetically in case of a grievance.

In this research, legal knowledge is measured by the level of understanding over some general issues regarding citizen’s rights over free government services, land ownership and management of natural resources, and rights to participate in politics and social activities. Meanwhile, the attitude component of legal awareness is measured by the standpoint over the citizen’s rights when accessing formal and informal justice system and when gender-based violence, specifically domestic violence, occurs. It is assumed that the possession of general legal knowledge, for example on women’s rights and gender awareness, is required before one could have a standpoint of how to access justice when the rights are violated.

1 For the first result, the impact of LEAD Project was assessed by comparing the number of beneficiaries and non beneficiaries who have “high level of awareness,” which are those who give strong statement/answer, the “very much agree” category, to all questions related positively to legal knowledge and attitude toward access to justice.

2 The second result is supported by the statistical test (Independent T-test) which indicates that the difference in means between beneficiaries vs. non beneficiaries’ legal awareness is statistically significant (the significance values or p-value ≤ 0.05). The T-test shows that there is a statistically significant difference between the mean of legal knowledge and attitude scores for beneficiaries and non beneficiaries (significance values of knowledge and attitude is lower than 0.05). In other words, beneficiaries have a statistically significantly higher mean score of legal awareness than non beneficiaries.

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In general, the LEAD Project has contributed significant impact on strengthening beneficiaries’ legal awareness. LEAD Project’s beneficiaries were relatively more aware of knowledge related to legal rights and legal assistance and protection. This finding is supported by two survey results. First, the research shows that basically the number of beneficiaries with high level of awareness exceeds that of non-beneficiaries, both in the aggregate measurement of knowledge (99.7 percent as compared to 87.5 percent) as well as in the aggregate measurement of attitude (64.2 percent as compared to 50 percent). For legal knowledge, almost all beneficiaries were found to have strong awareness of the issues of rights. While legal knowledge was not the problem for beneficiaries, more specific legal knowledge related with the attitude of how to access justice was still not known by a fair number of beneficiaries (35.8 percent). The number is even higher with the non-beneficiaries (50 percent).

Second, the research also shows that beneficiaries were found to have higher level of awareness than the non-beneficiaries. Beneficiaries compare to non-beneficiaries tend to have higher mean scores, both for aggregate knowledge (3.58 as opposed to 3.37) and for aggregate attitude (3.17 as opposed to 2.82). The T-test statistics show that the difference in mean scores are statistically significant, thus confirms that the result will be most likely to be found at the population level. However, the mean score in aggregate attitude that is lower than in aggregate knowledge implies that the majority of respondents, both beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries, were found to have greater familiarity with general issues on rights and lesser familiarity with knowledge related with the rights to access justice.

Chart 4.1

Group Mean Significance Value

Knowledge

Beneficiary 3.39 (Very much agree)0,007 (Significant)

Non Beneficiary 3.19 (Agree)

AttitudeBeneficiary 3.17 (Agree)

0,000 (Significant)Non Beneficiary 2.82 (Agree)

Therefore, in general legal knowledge is relatively quite accessible to both beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries. It is clearly shown when the legal knowledge variable is disaggregated by issues, which are knowledge about government service, knowledge about land ownership and natural resource

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management, and knowledge about the rights of marginal groups to participate in politics and social activities. In all the issues, the number of beneficiaries who have high level of knowledge is higher than the non beneficiaries. More number of beneficiaries than non-beneficiaries who have high level of awareness related with rights on government services (63.9 percent as compared to 43.1 percent), rights on land and natural resources (62.2 percent as compared to 56.9 percent), and the rights of marginal groups to participate in politics and social activities (87.8 percent as compared to 73.6 percent).

Chart 4.2

Group Mean Significance ValueGovernment Services

Beneficiary 3,80 (Very much agree) 0,005 (Significant)

Non Beneficiary 3,48 (Agree)

Natural Resources

Beneficiary 3,33 (Agree) 0,103 (Not significant)


Participation Beneficiary 3,61 (Very much agree) 0,055 (Not Significant)


However, the statistics show that beneficiaries have a significant higher level of legal knowledge compare to non beneficiaries only in the issues of government service. Although the mean scores of legal knowledge of beneficiaries are relatively higher compare to those of non beneficiaries across issues, however, only in the issue of government service the difference of mean score is statistically significant. Therefore, for issues related to natural resources and the rights of women and marginalized group to participate in politics and social activities, the LEAD Project did not share a significant contribution. It is likely for people to have the capacity to access such information.

Note that in assessing community legal awareness, no specific knowledge related with the State law and regulation are assessed. The most priority is to assess the community’s awareness of their rights and of what options are available to them to seek justice and legal assistance in case of the non-fulfillment of those rights. Beneficiaries’ legal knowledge was indicated by their knowledge related to some questions, among others, in the table below.

Table 4.1: Some Questions to Measure Legal Knowledge

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Issues Beneficiaries NonGovernment service

Everybody should be able to access ID card regardless the gender, religion and ethnicity

46.9% 38.9%

There are subsidies from Government in your village for poor children to go to school 56.2% 52.8%

Apart from registration fee, Jamkesmas are free in your village for poor families 49.3% 40.3%

Natural resourcesFor community owned land that is not owned by Government, no company can cut down trees without community’s permit and government’s permit

54.5% 51.4%

Company can dump waste in the river without a permit and without special treatment of the waste

64.9% 63.9%

When you disagree with Adat decision on land dispute you can get your case heard

36.8% 34.7%

Gender & marginal group’s participationOnly richer people have the right to run for the position of village head

79.5% 66.7%

Only men have the rights to run for the position of village head 68.8% 62.5%Only boys have a right to go to school 78.5% 79.2%

I.1. More significant impact in strengthening attitude toward access to justice

Providing basic legal knowledge might be a starting point of legal empowerment in the community level. However, general legal knowledge is relatively accessible for the poor and disadvantaged group. What is more important than basic knowledge about rights is the ability to recognize a situation in which they may have legal rights and know when and how they should seek further assistance to obtain satisfactory remedy. Unfortunately, the more specific understanding about how to access justice in case of a grievance, was not as much accessible for the poor and disadvantaged groups as the general legal knowledge one. For this reason, the LEAD Project has played a significant role in bridging the gap between the strategic need of the poor and disadvantaged group for legal awareness and the shortage of such service at the grass-root level.

This research confirms that the LEAD Project is mostly effective in strengthening beneficiaries’ attitude toward access to justice. The statistics indicates that the Project’s impact was even greater in terms of strengthening the attitude of beneficiaries to seek justice rather than in strengthening beneficiaries’ basic knowledge on rights. The T-test statistics shows that the difference in mean score of attitude is statistically more significant than the difference in mean score of knowledge between beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries.3 This means that beneficiaries have even higher legal awareness than non-beneficiaries in terms of the attitude, which is on the issues of rights to access justice in case of grievance.

For example, more beneficiaries understand that if they are beaten by a family member, they can report this to the police or at least village head. And that when the case occurs, they can have legal assistance

3 The T-test shows that the level of significance is even stronger in the attitude toward access to justice (p = 0.000) rather than in legal knowledge (p = 0.007). In general, a large T-score and low p-value indicates an observed difference that is statistically significant.

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for free as well as special protection for witnesses and victims by the police. The survey captures that for such issues, beneficiaries tend to have a very high positive attitude than the non-beneficiaries. They are also relatively more agreeable to stronger statements such as they “would go,” and not only “can go”, to the police to report such domestic violence and that the police “should”, not only “will”, take action accordingly.

Chart 4.3: Legal Awareness by Provinces

Province Group Mean Significance Value

Southeast Sulawesi

KnowledgeBeneficiary 3.42

0,012 (Significant)Non Beneficiary

3.05

Attitude Beneficiary 3.020,000 (Significant)

Non Beneficiary 2.56

North MalukuKnowledge Beneficiary

3.580,475 (Not significant)

Non Beneficiary3.52

Attitude Beneficiary2.95

0,009 (Significant)Non Beneficiary 2.72

Central Sulawesi

Knowledge Beneficiary3.19

0,147 (Not significant)Non Beneficiary

3.02

Attitude Beneficiary2.96


More interestingly, the trend that LEAD Project is mostly effective in strengthening attitude is found consistently across Project’s location in three provinces. Among the three provinces, only in Southeast Sulawesi that the difference in means score of legal knowledge between beneficiaries and non beneficiaries is statistically significant. In Central Sulawesi and North Maluku, there are no significant differences between beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries in terms of legal awareness. Meanwhile, in terms of attitude toward access to justice, the differences in mean scores are statistically significant across the three provinces. This suggests that basic legal knowledge is relatively accessible for non-beneficiaries in

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Central Sulawesi and North Maluku. Most probably, the nature of past conflict had made people in the location more critical on the issues of rights. Therefore, the Project’s contribution to legal knowledge was not significant in those two locations. However, in terms of strengthening awareness related with how to access justice, LEAD Project has contributed significant impact across provinces, where beneficiaries were found to have greater awareness on how to access justice when a grievance occurs.

I.2. Strengthening awareness in accessing formal justice system and on gender rights

In general, there are two alternatives of justice system that can be accessed by villagers when they perceive that their rights have been breached or their entitlement with-held, the formal and informal justice system. The previous UNDP assessment of community access to justice in five provinces in Indonesia found that citizens, especially women, strongly prefer the informal justice system.4 Similar findings were also suggested by the study of the World Bank (2004) and the Asia Foundation (2005). 5 In the case of women, the World Bank report on women’s access to justice suggests that women have greater preference for informal justice system because the actors are relatively well-known, accessible and less costly. However, this alternative could not guarantee appropriate legal protection and satisfactory remedy for women with legal cases, especially cases of domestic violence and rape. The informal justice actors or duty bearers very often failed to give proper sanction to the defendant and ensured the law enforcement for it.6 Those studies indicate that villagers are less likely to have the awareness and capacity to access formal justice system as compared to informal justice system.

This research shows the significant impact of LEAD Project in strengthening beneficiaries’ legal awareness regarding their rights in accessing formal justice system and the rights when experiencing gender-based violence and discrimination. As can be seen from Chart 5.4, beneficiaries are especially more likely than non-beneficiaries to have the high positive attitude over these two issues. Thirteen percent more beneficiaries than non-beneficiaries were highly aware about how to have their cases handled by formal justice system (51 percent and 38.9 percent respectively), especially the police. Meanwhile, only 9 percent more beneficiaries than non-beneficiaries were highly aware about how to have their cases handled by informal justice system, especially community or adat leaders (36.1 percent as opposed to 44.1 percent). The disparity between beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries are also pronounced in their attitude about rights to access justice if they experience gender-based violence or discrimination. As much as 12.5 percent more beneficiaries than non-beneficiaries were highly aware of this issue (61.1 percent and 48.6 percent respectively). Meanwhile, less disparity between beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries is found (9.1 percent) in their attitude about the rights marginal groups to participate in the development process (54.5 percent as compared to 47.2 percent).

4 “Justice For All? – An Assessment of Access to Justice in Five Provinces of Indonesia,” UNDP, Jakarta, 2007, p. 64-65. However, this study found that there is little difference between respondents who have used the formal justice system (10%) as compared to the informal justice system (12%).

5 See “Survey Report: Citizen’s Perceptions of the Indonesian Justice Sector – Findings and Recommendation,” the Asia Foundation, Jakarta, 2005 and “Village Justice in Indonesia: Case Studies on Access to Justice, Village Democracy and Governance,” the World Bank, Jakarta, February 2004.

6 “Women’s Access to Justice in Indonesia: a Case Study on Women Justice Seeker in Cianjur, Brebes and Lombok,” the World Bank, December 2008, p. 29-30.

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The statistics also confirms that the different in mean scores of awareness between beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries are statistically significant only on the issues of rights when accessing formal justice system (p value is 0.001) and rights on gender-based violence and discrimination (p value is 0.029). The differences of mean score of attitude are not statistically significant in the issues of rights when accessing informal justice system and rights of marginal groups. This implies that in the issues where the differences are not significant, non beneficiaries could also access related legal information that beneficiaries have. It is less likely the case in the issues where the differences are significant.

Chart 4.4

Group Mean Significance ValueRights in accessing

formal justice systemBeneficiary 3,10 (Agree) 0,001 (Significant)


Rights in accessing informal justice system

Beneficiary 3,03 (Agree) 0,597 (Not Significant)


Gender rightBeneficiary 3,23 (Agree) 0,029 (Significant)


Right of marginal groups

Beneficiary 3,33 (Agree) 0,050 (Not Significant)


The result shows that access to informal justice system is not the issue at stake in the village level. Both beneficiaries and non beneficiaries face no significant barriers to seek help from community and adat leaders when they face legal cases. While to bring or report cases to the police is not the choice for many of village people. This finding confirms previous findings discussed above that the citizens strongly prefer the informal justice system when facing legal case. The fact that beneficiaries of LEAD Project have higher positive attitude to take action and report the cases to the police when facing legal cases shows that the Project had significantly strengthened community access to formal justice system.

This is also the case for the issues of rights related to gender-based violence and discrimination. The impact of LEAD project in forming a high positive attitude is statistically proven. Beneficiaries have more awareness on domestic violence issues, such as, it is never acceptable for husbands to hit their wives; that the husbands can be prosecuted since it is against the government law; and that when the case happens traditional leaders should pass the case on to the police for handling if the victim requests for

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referral. The impact of LEAD Project is more pronounced in strengthening beneficiaries’ attitude toward the rights of gender. Meanwhile, no significant difference in the level of attitude toward the rights of marginal groups in development process indicates that the issue was quite accessible for both beneficiaries and non beneficiaries. Non beneficiaries tend to also have the awareness that women have the right to be able to participate in, be represented by women leaders, and have space to speak out in community decision making forums, as well as that special attention should be given to women to make sure their needs and views are accommodated in community decision making forums. Beneficiaries’ attitude toward access to justice is measured among others with the questions on the table below.

Table 4.2: Some Questions to Measure Attitude toward Access to JusticeIssues Beneficiaries Non

Rights when accessing formal justice systemIf you or someone you know are beaten by a family member you WOULD GO AND report this to the police 26.7% 25%

If you or someone you know is beaten by a family member and you report this, the police WILL take action 39.6% 37.5%

If you, a member of your family, or someone you know is charged by the police is charged and arrested for a crime, the police SHOULD tell you/them straight away that you can have someone who knows about the law to give legal representation

35.4% 29.2%

Rights when accessing informal justice systemIf you, a family member, or a friend are beaten in the home, and the case is passed on to a traditional or community leader for handling, the sanctions are heavier for the person who did the beating rather than the victim no matter what and who trigger the conflict

11.1% 9.7%

In cases involving men and women which are handled by community leaders or elders, women should be able to speak up in the forum 44.1% 37.5%

In cases involving violence, if you or a member of you family/friend were unhappy with the outcome, the case can be passed on to the police 44.8% 37.5%

Gender rightsIn your opinion, it is NEVER ok for husbands to hit their wives 58.3% 54.2%When problems occur and husbands hit their wives, according to the government law, husbands can be prosecuted and can be punished by the law

45.8% 38.9%

When problems occur and husbands hit their wives, traditional leaders SHOULD pass the case on to the police for handling if the victim requests for referral

41% 36.1%

Rights of marginal groupWomen HAVE THE RIGHT to be able to participate in or be represented by women leaders and have space to speak out in community decision making forums

51% 47.2%

Special attention SHOULD BE given to women to make sure their needs and views are accommodated in community decision making forums 33.3% 29.2%

I.3. Stronger impact on marginalized groups: women and low educated citizens

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The LEAD Project was designed to especially target the poor and most needy citizens in order to promote greater access to justice for all, irrespective of gender, race, religion, age, class or creed. The previous UNDP assessment showed that many of the key injustices cited by the disadvantaged or marginalized communities relate to their social and economic welfare, meanwhile community awareness of specific rights provided by Indonesian legislation is low.7 Therefore, basic legal awareness on their rights to access government services and assistance, on gender rights, and on their rights to access appropriate forum to seek for justice when injustices occurs is especially crucial for this communities. It is crucial not only for the process of democracy and protection of human rights, but also for the improvement in economic prosperity.

That such legal empowerment is mostly needed by the disadvantaged and marginalized groups is strongly confirmed by the survey result. It shows that the LEAD Project has been more beneficial to women and low educated citizens. As the Project was especially designed to reach the disadvantaged and marginalized groups of people, this finding confirms that effectiveness of the project design. Female and low educated beneficiaries are most likely to gain more awareness due to LEAD project as compared to male and high educated beneficiaries.

Chart 4.5 Chart 4.6 Legal Awareness of Female Beneficiary Legal Awareness of Male Beneficiary

Group MeanSignificance Value



3.53

AttitudeBeneficiary 2.97


2.62

Due to the Project, women experienced more significant gain in legal awareness than man do, especially in terms of their attitude toward access to justice. A very high 70.6 percent of female beneficiaries compare to 48.7 percent of female non-beneficiaries are having high level of awareness in terms of 7 “Justice For All? – An Assessment of Access to Justice in Five Provinces of Indonesia,” UNDP, Jakarta, 2007, p. 42, 51. The study found that six main categories of injustice issues encountered in five provinces of study are access to government services and assistance, ownership and management of land and natural resources, gender violence and discrimination, employment and labor rights, criminality and inadequate law enforcement, and post-conflict security and property rights.

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0,282 (Not Significant)Non Beneficiary

3.58



2.69

attitude toward access to justice. The difference between female beneficiaries and female non-beneficiaries in terms of attitude toward access to justice is significantly higher than the difference between male beneficiaries and male non-beneficiaries for the same category (21.9 percent as opposed to 4.5 percent respectively). This apparent high difference between female beneficiaries and female non-beneficiaries with high level of attitude can perhaps be explained that knowledge on the rights to access justice system, legal assistance and protection, and gender rights are not accessible for most women in the village. Therefore LEAD Project has significantly strengthened their capacity to access legal information.

The statistics also confirms that the impact of the LEAD Project on women is greater than on men. The statistics shows the difference of mean score of legal knowledge and attitude toward access to justice between beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries are significant (the p values are 0.008 and 0.000 respectively). This suggests that female beneficiaries compare to female non-beneficiaries have a significantly higher level of awareness, both on legal knowledge (3.84 as opposed to 3.53) and attitude toward access to justice (2.97 as opposed to 2.62). While in male beneficiaries, the significant difference of mean score between male beneficiaries and male non-beneficiaries is only found in terms of the attitude toward access to justice (p value is 0.000). This suggests that in terms of legal knowledge, there is no significant difference between the level of awareness of beneficiaries and non beneficiaries.

Similar trend is also found the results of legal awareness are disaggregated by education. Those with low level of education include respondents with junior high school education or lower, while those with high level of education include respondents with senior high school education or higher. The impact of LEAD Project is relatively greater on beneficiaries with low level of education rather than those of high level of education.

Among low-educated respondents, the difference between beneficiaries and non beneficiaries with high positive attitude toward access to justice is remarkably great (30.5 percent). In contrast, among high educated respondents, the difference between beneficiaries and non beneficiaries with high positive attitude toward access to justice is only small (7.5 percent). Assuming that those low-educated respondents are the most marginalized and disadvantaged citizen in the village, this evidence plainly explains that legal information is likely not accessible for this group, thus has benefitted them at most.

Among the low education respondents, beneficiaries have statistically significant higher mean scores in legal knowledge (64.7 for beneficiaries as compared to 55.5 for non-beneficiaries) and in attitude toward access to justice (98.1 for beneficiaries as compared to 80 for non-beneficiaries). However, among the high education respondents, beneficiaries have only statistically significant higher mean score in legal attitude (98.3 for beneficiaries as compared to 90.4 for non-beneficiaries), not in legal knowledge (64.2 for beneficiaries as compared to 62.1 for non-beneficiaries). This suggests that basic legal knowledge is relatively more accessible for citizen with high level of education. However, legal awareness, both in strengthening legal knowledge and attitude toward access to justice, is significantly necessary for citizen with low level of education.

Chart 4.7 Chart 4.8Legal Awareness of Low Educated Beneficiaries Legal Awareness of High Educated Beneficiaries

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3.26



2.42

2. FACTORS INFLUENCING THE IMPACT

The significant impact of LEAD Project on beneficiaries is indebted to at least two factors in the implementation process, the network and capacity of CSOs that implementing the Project and the strategy of socialization used in the implementation. Some evident especially from the qualitative research suggest the significant role of these factors in strengthening beneficiaries legal awareness.

2.1.The capacity and networking of CSO

The presence of CSOs in strengthening beneficiaries’ legal awareness was very relevant. Although people could access legal knowledge and information from various sources, especially television program, the number of beneficiaries who admitted that their source of legal information was CSOs who implemented LEAD Project is significantly high. The percentage of beneficiaries who received information from the local CSOs or religious institution is quite significant (36.1 percent) compare to the percentage of non-beneficiaries (4.2 percent). This explains that although people might receive legal knowledge from many sources of information, however specific legal empowerment project is needed to build a more positive attitude toward access to justice.

Most of the legal awareness activities were conducted at the grass-root level. This requires an effective strategy to ensure people’s participation during the process as well as a good capacity of networking to ensure cooperation among various stakeholders in the village level. It is evident that CSOs have the experience and capacity to work and gain people’s participation and cooperation at the grass-root. Thus, LEAD Project’s strategy to focus on strengthening the capacity of CSOs in implementing legal empowerment project has helped the Project reached its main objective in legal awareness

Chart 4.912



0,100 (Not Significant)Non Beneficiary

3.65



2.74

CSO’s strategy to recruit local citizen advisors (cadres, paralegal, and barefoot among others) also support their effort to ensure local people’s participation during the process of legal awareness at the village level. The role of local citizen advisors as the legal information person in the village level was very strategic to legal awareness activities. They would deliver their legal knowledge at any time in need, unconstrained with situation and time. For example, they disseminated legal information while working at the field or while sitting with neighbors after working hour. They would sustain the process of strengthening legal awareness through village discussion or film watching on a day to day basis.

2.2.The strategy of socialization

The significant impact in strengthening legal awareness was also very much due to the very effective strategy of socialization. The strategy includes village discussions, film viewing, interactive radio dialogues, media socialization through the distribution of posters, brochures, and flyers locally. Especially for CSOs that focused on rural/village areas, the strategy of village discussion, film viewing and focus group discussion were proven to be very effective in transferring legal knowledge and information to community.

Village discussion

The strategy of village discussion were proven to be very effective in transferring legal knowledge and information to community as well as raising their confidence to speak up and express ideas or complaint over public issues. Through this activity in the village level, LEAD Project can have a wide out-reach in the community, including community member, religious and adat leaders. Critical legal knowledge can also be delivered to community fruitfully. A dweller who was having a land dispute with government admitted that village discussions have given her understanding about her rights on land and natural resources. Meanwhile, in conflict area such as in Poso, Central Sulawesi, where due to social conflict several years ago people become more resistant to discuss sensitive issues in public, village discussion facilitated the people to have a community forum of discussion. A community leader in Poso claimed that, “This forum allows villagers to speak what they think and what they want.”

Film viewing

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The strategy of film viewing in the community was effective in reaching large number of people. People were enthusiastic to attend and participate in the activities since it was considered as entertainment for them. Through these activities in the village level, LEAD Project can have a wide out-reach in the community. Mostly, the activities also involved community, religious and adat leaders in the village.

Besides, film viewing activities were also effective in delivering sensitive issues that were not aligned yet with local practices and tradition, such as domestic violence. Supported by a campaign that was conducted before and discussion that was conducted after the film viewing, people gained understanding regarding the issues being discussed. An adat leader in Southeast Sulawesi declared, “Now I’m afraid to pinch my child…” While a religious leader commented, “Now we have to beware for not getting involved in domestic violence!”

Posters/flyers

Although it is not as effective as village discussion or film viewing in raising people’s legal awareness regarding heavy topics such as domestic violence, however posters play quite significant a role in terms of giving a saturation effect regarding the issues delivered through village discussion or film watching. For CSOs who work on gender issues, the working objective is to change the mindset of the community to be more gender responsive. A CSO in North Maluku, Daurmala, claimed that changing the mindset of the community is not an easy task. The patriarchal culture of the community and the traditional religious values concerning gender relations consider domestic violence as a private and domestic issue which is not to be intervened by outsiders. This culture has been internalized and socialized for a long time in the community. Therefore, besides activities such as village discussions and film watching, distribution of posters posted conspicuously in strategic places had helped the paralegals in reminding the community of the relevance and significance of the anti domestic violence issue.

Posters are also effective in providing general information in strategic area. LBH Kendari who worked at the capital city of Kendari, Southeast Sulawesi, used big posters that placed in front of their Post of Legal Aid to inform people about their existence as a legal aid service which provides free legal aid to the poor/disadvantaged groups. A client reported that he knew LBH Kendari from a poster, thus when he faced a dispute with the government over his land he knew where to seek free legal aid.

Local cadres and post/center of information or complaint

The presence of post of information or complaint in the village level also helped the effort of increasing legal awareness. Usually the “post of information” was local cadres who acted as knot points in the community to spread out legal information and knowledge as well as to facilitate village discussion. The strategy of using local cadres as knot points in the community apparently became one of the key successes to establish new ideas in the community. They were very proactive in spreading legal knowledge and information in the village.

Radio dialog and advertisement

The used of radio channel could be effective in reaching a large coverage of target group. A CSO in Southeast Sulawesi that used the state-owned radio (RRI) channel to disseminate the issues of domestic violence and its role as the post of legal complaints for related cases, successfully reached a wide coverage of target groups, including those who live in the remote areas in the province. As a result,

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people started to report their legal case to CSO. However, in the context of Ternate, radio is not as popular as it used to be. Radio shows though sometimes used by the CSO as a mean of socialization, is not as popular, nor effective, as the interactive and face-to-face village discussions. Both CSO and the local community admit that village discussions are the main mean of socialization which is considered the most popular and the most effective in raising legal awareness locally.

Other innovative strategy

Some innovative strategy also worked well in delivering legal awareness in the community. Activity such as cookie training was used by a CSO in Central Sulawesi as the entry point to discuss gender relation issues. Another strategy, a clients meeting, was used by LBH Central Sulawesi to enrich beneficiaries’ legal perspective by discussing each client’s legal case. A client said “I always feel stronger and ready to fight over my land conflict case after I shared my case and got positive support, not only from LBH but also from other people whom LBH also assisted.” This meeting facilitated discussion among justice seeker while provided encouragement and motivation for them to continue their effort to obtain justice over their grievance.

3. IMMEDIATE RESULT: ACCESS TO APPROPRIATE FORUM

Increase of legal awareness in the community was indicated by the fact that people started to report their legal case to CSOs. Beneficiaries started to have access to appropriate forum of justice system in the village level to seek justice over a grievance and their grievances were received by local duty bearers. The evident was especially experienced by CSOs works in gender issues. Gender awareness and legal information regarding the law of the elimination on the violence of women and children have brought significant impact on women. It helped women to somehow break the social and cultural constraints that limit their capacity to seek justice over their grievance.

An evident is found from a CSO in Southeast Sulawesi, KPI, who recorded that their socialization of domestic violence issues and law through radio news, village discussion and film watching during March 2008 – March 2009, has led many women reporting their legal case to KPI. Before conducting LEAD project, KPI received only 1 to 2 cases per year. However, during LEAD project implementation, as many as 20 cases (in the year of 2008-2009) and 23 cases (in the year of 2009-2010) consecutively were reported to KPI, either through the legal cadres in the village or directly to KPI office in Kendari City. Those cases usually were facilitated by KPI Community Organizers (COs). While village discussion and film watching have targeted the local people in the villages where LEAD Project was implemented, KPI’s strategy to use the state-owned radio (RRI) channel to disseminate the issues of domestic violence and the role of KPI as the post of legal complaints for such cases, have reached beneficiaries in all region. This was also experienced with another CSO in Poso, Central Sulawesi, KPKP-ST. Their strategy to promote information/complaint centers in 30 locations had led many women reporting their legal case to KPKP-ST. A lady who is responsible with the center testified, “ I even have to work harder since so many women came here, asking for my help for their family problems, or even to solve their problems with litigation process.”

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II. ON THE STRENGTHENED CAPACITY OF TARGET CLAIM HOLDER TO ACCESS JUSTICE

Increased legal awareness is the basic outcome of legal empowerment process. In the previous discussion, the research has shown that, more than impacting on the increased knowledge regarding specific rights, the LEAD Project was especially beneficial in strengthening beneficiaries’ attitude toward access to justice. This finding basically confirms the next expected results of the Project, which is strengthened legal capacity of target claim holder to access justice. The high level of awareness toward access to justice, which in this research is categorized as the attitude part of beneficiaries’ legal awareness, indicates the successful efforts of the Project to build the law-oriented skills necessary for target claim holders to assert or realize their rights, i.e., to access justice.

However, strong attitude to access justice from the demand side was necessary but not sufficient condition to ensure marginalized and disadvantaged citizens’ access to justice. The sufficient condition relates very strongly with the supply side of access to justice. When people are aware of their rights and seek justice over a grievance, an effective handling of grievance and a provision of remedy are needed as the sufficient condition to ensure people’s access to appropriate forum. The appropriate forum in LEAD Project’s framework may be either formal or informal justice system, and may include local government offices and processes not normally associate with the formal justice system. This appropriate forum must

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Main Findings

Strengthened capacity to access legal service. More beneficiaries have been using legal service or assistance provided by various justice actors, especially those related with the LEAD Project: the CSOs, related community advisors (community organizers, cadres, barefoot, etc.), legal aid organizations and paralegals.

Factors influencing the impact. Beneficiaries capacity to access justice is strengthened due to the presence of local duty bearers at the village level, the functioning of LEAD Project legal service and the revitalizing of government service.

The presence of local duty bearers is vital. The presence of LEAD Project Citizen Advisor has been significantly benefiting benefiries.They play a vital role in connecting communities with formal justice system actors, provide legal assistance using the non-litigation mechanism, reach the unreachable citizens in the village, and able to interfere with existing gender biased custom.

The functioning of LEAD Project legal services is significant. LEAD Project legal services such as post of information for legal advice, post of complaint for government services, and village discussion at the village level have strengthened the access of beneficiaries to legal services.

The revitalization of government legal services. An effective Women and Children Empowerment Integrated Services Centre provide integrated legal service to target claim holders.

be accessible by citizen as claim holder and capable to deliver an effective handling of grievance and provision of remedies. 8

In order to strengthen the capacity of target claim holders to access justice, the LEAD Project has been focusing on the legal empowerment strategy. The LEAD Project’s initiatives for community legal empowerment include efforts to build paralegal capacities for specific villages and strengthen NGOs that will develop greater levels of legal knowledge and skills within communities. Besides, the strategy also includes efforts to support legal services provided by lawyers, NGOs and other professionals.9

1. BENEFICIARIES CAPACITY TO ACCESS LEGAL SERVICE FROM DUTY BEARERS ARE STRENGTHENED

This research found that the LEAD Project has contributed some significant impact on strengthening the capacity of target claim holder to access justice. Chart 5.10 shows that beneficiaries have more capacity to access legal assistance from certain forums at the village as well as outside the village. It shows that more beneficiaries have been using legal service or assistance provided by various justice actors, especially those related with the LEAD Project, the CSOs, related community advisors (community organizers, cadres, barefoot, etc.), legal aid organizations and paralegals.

The significant impact of LEAD Project on the strengthening claim holder’s access to justice is especially indicated by the fact of the very high number of beneficiaries as compared to non-beneficiaries who claimed that they “have used”, or “would use if they had a problem”, the legal aid organization or paralegal (43.8 percent as opposed to 11.1 percent) and the CSOs or related citizen advisors (49.7 percent as opposed to 18.1 percent). As much as 32.7 percent more beneficiaries than non-beneficiaries who claimed that they have used or would use legal aid organization or paralegal, and 31.6 percent more beneficiaries than non-beneficiaries who claimed that they have used or would use CSOs or related citizen advisors when they had a legal case indicate that the presence of such actors or forum are very significant to the strengthened capacity of beneficiaries to access legal service.

Similar trend is also found in terms of beneficiaries access to community-based organization such as PKK, Karang Taruna or Majlis Ta’lim and formal justice actors, especially the police and lawyers. As much as 10.7 percent and 11.8 percent more beneficiaries than non-beneficiaries claimed that they have used or would use community-based organization and formal justice actors respectively. The T-test statistics also confirms that the difference in mean scores between beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries who have access to each legal service is statistically significant.

Meanwhile, it is not the case in terms of beneficiaries access to legal service provided by village head, government officers and informal justice actors (community/religious/adat leaders). Although the number of beneficiaries who claimed that they have used or would use the mentioned legal service is relatively higher than the non-beneficiaries for each service, however the results of T-test statistics show that there

8 An effective justice delivery system entails the impartial, timely and consistent application of known norms by formal and informal justice delivery systems, free from corruption, political intervention and in accordance with national and international human rights standards (LEAD Project Document, p. 6).

9 The LEAD Project Document, p. 1417

are no significant difference in the mean score between beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries in the use of such services.

Chart 4.10: Beneficiaries Access to Legal Service“Have you used the following legal service when you have had a problem involving

the law, violence, disputes or problems of a similar nature?”

Type of Legal Service Group Mean Significance Value

Community-based Organization Beneficiary 0,260,033 (Significant)

Non Beneficiary 0,15

Legal aid organization or paralegal Beneficiary 0,440,000 (Significant)


Formal justice actors Beneficiary 0,350,043 (Significant)


Village head Beneficiary 0,460,084 (Not Significant)


Government officer Beneficiary 0,230,246 (Not Significant)


Community/religious/adat leaders Beneficiary 0,430,710 (Not Significant)


CSOs and related citizen advisor Beneficiary 0,500,000 (Signficant)


When the results are disaggregated by province, the finding is still consistent across provinces. The very high differences between beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries in the use of legal service are found in the use of CSOs or related citizen advisors and the legal aid organization or paralegal. This fact indicates that the impact of the LEAD Project in strengthening claim holder’s capacity to access justice is highly significant.

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Chart 4.11: Beneficiaries Access to Legal Service in Southeast Sulawesi


Community-based OrganizationBeneficiary 0.15

0,000 (Significant)Non Beneficiary 0

Legal aid organization or paralegalBeneficiary 0.24


Formal justice actorsBeneficiary 0.24

0,448 (Not Significant)Non Beneficiary 0.17

Village headBeneficiary 0.32


Government officerBeneficiary 0.15


Community/religious/adat leadersBeneficiary 0.26


CSOs and related citizen advisor Beneficiary 0.11


Chart 4.12: Beneficiaries Access to Legal Service in North Maluku





0,000 (Significant)Non Beneficiary 0








1.000 (Not Significant)Non Beneficiary 0.17


0,000 (Signficant)Non Beneficiary 0.04

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Chart 4.13: Beneficiaries Access to Legal Service in Central Sulawesi
















However, there is a variety in beneficiaries access to legal service in Southeast Sulawesi and North Maluku. In Southeast Sulawesi, the community-based organization played a significant role in strengthening beneficiaries access to legal service, as compared to North Maluku where village head played the significant role. In those two provinces, the numbers of beneficiaries who have access those legal services are significantly higher than the non-beneficiaries (14.6 percent and 22.9 percent respectively). In North Maluku, the fact that village head played a significant role in strengthening beneficiaries access to legal services was partly due to the fact that local CSOs work closely with village head in delivering legal services to the community.

2. FACTORS INFLUENCING THE IMPACT

This impact was mainly due to the strengthened capacity of various justice providers as duty bearers to provide formal and informal justice delivery mechanism for marginalized and disadvantaged citizens as target claim holders of the Project. Due to the Project, local citizen advisors have started to function in providing legal services at the village level. Meanwhile, outside the village, the capacity of government key stakeholders, especially district government officers, to provide an effective legal and public service has been strengthened.

The survey shows that due to the LEAD Project, beneficiaries have more access to legal services provided by various duty bearers either at the village level or outside the village. This research categorize three groups of duty bearers that provide justice delivery mechanism for claim holders in the community.

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First is the LEAD Project Citizen Advisors. They include community organizers, paralegal, cadres, and barefoot who work mainly at the village level to provide legal assistance and their presence in the village relates with the LEAD Project’s implementation. Second is the Village Informal Leaders. They include the village heads, community leaders, religious leaders, and adat leaders who quite often play the role of informal justice actors at the village level. Third is the Duty Bearers Outside Village. They include the law enforcement officers, such as the police, judges, and lawyers, as well as government offices that are accountable for the promotion of justice for marginalized and disadvantaged groups, such as among others, the local government offices for women’s empowerment, for social welfare, and for manpower. These three categories help the research to measure the magnitude of the Project’s impact on claim holder’s capacity to access justice.

1.1 The presence of LEAD Project Citizen Advisors at local level

As can be seen from Chart 5.10, basically beneficiaries have more capacity to access various duty bearers in case of a grievance as compared to non beneficiaries. Both beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries were asked whether, according to their knowledge, several duty bearers that provide legal advices were presence in their village. The chart shows that more beneficiaries than non-beneficiaries have the knowledge about the presence of the LEAD Project Citizen Advisors, Village Informal Leaders and other duty bearers outside the village to provide justice delivery mechanism. However, among the three categories of duty bearers, beneficiaries are mostly benefited from the presence of LEAD Project Citizen Advisors at the village level.

Chart 4.14: Beneficiaries Access to Legal Advice by Type of Duty Bearers


Lead Project Citizens AdvisorBeneficiary 0.75 0.000 (Significant)


Village Informal LeadersBeneficiary 0.74 0.052 (Significant)


Duty Bearers Outside VillageBeneficiary 0.53 0.114 (Not significant)


A very high percentage of beneficiaries compare to non-beneficiaries confirms the significant presence of LEAD Project Citizen Advisors in providing legal advice in the community (74,7 percent as compared to 40.3 percent respectively). In contrast, only 12.5 percent more beneficiaries confirms the presence of Village Informal Leader in providing legal advice, and only 9.5 percent more beneficiaries confirms the presence of other duty bearers from outside the village to give legal advice. A significant difference (34.4

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percent) between beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries who confirms the presence of LEAD Project Citizen Advisors indicates that such legal service were still absent in many communities and that the presence was very significant in the community.

The results of T-test statistics also confirm that the difference between beneficiaries and non beneficiaries who have the access to LEAD Project Citizen Advisors as well as village informal leaders is significant. This implies that the LEAD Project has contributed significant impact on strengthening beneficiaries capacity to access legal advice from LEAD Project Citizen Advisors and village informal leaders. However, on the contrary, the impact on the beneficiaries capacity to access duty bearers outside village is not significant.

Chart 4.15: Beneficiaries Access to Legal Services by Type of Duty Bearers and Provinces


Southeast Sulawesi



Village Informal LeadersBeneficiary 1.65 0.317 (Not Significant)


Duty Bearers Outside VillageBeneficiary 1.51 0.318 (Not Significant)


North Maluku



Village Informal LeadersBeneficiary 1.85 0.019 (Significant)


Duty Bearers Outside VillageBeneficiary 1.69 0.036 (Significant)


Central Sulawesi


Non Beneficiary 1.29Village Informal Leaders Non Beneficiary 1.71 0.077 (Not Significant)

Duty Bearers Outside VillageBeneficiary 1.5 0.051 (Significant)


Meanwhile the impact of LEAD Project in strengthening community access to village informal leader and duty bearers outside villages were not direct. The evident that more beneficiaries as opposed to non-

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beneficiaries who were also knowledgeable about the presence of village informal leaders and other duty bearers outside village shows that beneficiaries had also gained the knowledge through the Project, that they could seek legal advices from the rest two categories of duty bearers.

The presence of LEAD Project Citizen Advisors as specific-legal-empowerment duty bearers at the village level was crucial in strengthening citizen’s capacity to access appropriate mechanism of grievance handling. Several arguments are used to support this claim. First, they play a vital role in connecting communities with formal justice system actors, thus strengthen community’s access to formal justice system. Second, however, they also play significant role in strengthening the informal justice mechanism. Their presence in the village was not only significant in delivering legal information and strengthening community legal awareness, but also in providing legal assistance using the non-litigation mechanism. They provide legal advice and handle case through mediation or ‘soft’ arbitration which usually being held by village heads as the local authority. Nevertheless, they could not replace the role of traditional adat leaders who handle cases through customary or adat law. Third, their presence is crucial to reach the unreachable citizens in the village and interfere with existing custom that was in fact discriminating certain groups in the community and violating their rights. The following case study highlights the role of paralegal in delivering legal service at grass-root level.

Case Study 1: The Role of Paralegal in Ternate, North Maluku

In 2008. a village discussion was held in Tobololo, a village ‘behind the mountain Gamalama’ several miles from the city center of Ternate. The discussion was held by the CSO Daurmala on the issue of women rights and more specifically, domestic violence. Tthe village discussion was in the local dialect and not in formal Indonesian, and it attracted both men and women from the immediate vicinity. One of the women who went to the village discussion was Ibu Odah. She is a homemaker with a relatively good education and she was curious to what kind of discussion was being held by Daurmala. Her husband has a stable job and her two children are in College and in Junior High School. She has both the time and the opportunity to participate in this village discussion.

That was how it all began for Ibu Odah. She was impressed by the village discussion, because it made her realize the meaning of domestic violence and that made her becoming more aware of her immediate surroundings and the potential problems concerning domestic violence. She volunteered and was selected to become one of ten women who underwent paralegal training organized by Daurmala. She was proud of being selected and that made her serious during her training. After her paralegal training, she started to practise in her own village. In the past two years she has handled three cases dealing with domestic violence and succeeded in bringing them to the local judicial court.

The sucess rate for Ibu Odah is remarkable in the local context. Out of the ten women who were trained as paralegals by Daurmala in 2008, only Ibu Odah still practise as a paralegal. The other women did not practise as paralegals any longer. Daurmala during the second phase of the project has to recruit new women from Tobololo to undergo training as paralegals. Why was Ibu Odah the only one left behind from the first phase of training? One of the major reason was because the Community Organizer hired by Daurmala for the first phase was not active and did not socialize with the women paralegals . The women felt abandoned and was not motivated to stay on. In the second phase the community organizer from Daurmala was very active and stayed with the women paralegals in Tobololo. Thus Ibu Odah is now accompanied by her four paralegal women friends from the second phase of the project. The role of the community organizer as motivator and mobilizer was very crucial to recruit and to maintain the network of women paralegals in Tobololo.

Ibu Odah is very proud of the fact that she was able to handle three cases concerning domestic violence in Tobololo, including violence between a couple who was dating and not yet legally married. It is indeed remarkable that she was able to pursue this particular case and was able to get a legal conviction from the judicial local court. Since the Law On Anti Domestic Violence was specifically for couples who are legally married. The legal conviction means that there is now a jurisprudence for dating couples and not just married couples. Ibu Odah was pleased for the woman since this case convinced women and men that violence between couples are not tolerated any longer as it used to be.

One of the major obstacles Ibu Odah and her women paralegal friends have faced is the accusation of interfering in other

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peoples’ private matters. Since domestic violence in traditional cultural context of Ternate was always considered as a personal and domestic issue to be dealt with by family members and not by outsiders. These cases are usually handled within the family and abiding to adat customary laws, not by the official legal establishment within the formal judicial system. This is a breakthrough for women rights especially the anti domestic violence issue. The local patriarchal traditional culture is gradually changing towards a more positive legal protection for women who are the vast majority of the domestic violence victims.

In this context, it is also remarkable and not coincidental that all these women paralegals in Tobololo are originally from areas outside of Tobololo. Ibu Odah came from Sanana in the Sula archipelago (south of Ternate) and so do her women paralegal friends. With the exception of Ibu Atinah who is still single, all the other women paralegals in Tobololo such as Ibu Eni and Ibu Suriah are married to local Tobololo men. It took all of them hard efforts to convince their husbands to allow them to undergo paralegal training conducted by Daurmala. These women considered the local traditional culture of Ternate as practised in Tobololo as highly patriarchal and this is the reason why not many local Tobololo women are willing to become paralegals.

Highly aware of the cultural tradition, these “outside” women are not giving up hope for a better future. With the ongoing good relations with Daurmala and the successful example of the hard work of Ibu Odah, they know that persistence and perseverance will prevail for women victims of domestic violence in Tobololo.

1.2 The functioning of several LEAD Project’s Legal Services

Besides the presence of LEAD Project Citizen Advisor as the justice actors in the village level, some legal service institutions were also vital in strengthening community access to justice. Such institutions include information post for legal service and post of complaint for public/government services, as well as village forum to discuss laws and legal issues.

Chart 4.16: Beneficiaries Access toPost of Information for Legal Advice

Chart 4.17: Beneficiaries Access toPost of Complaints for Government Services

The survey shows that the number of beneficiaries, compared to non beneficiaries, who have access to such services are relatively higher. As much as 32 percent more beneficiaries have access to post of information to seek legal advice. Meanwhile, as much as 22.3 percent more beneficiaries have access to post of complaints to dissatisfaction of government services. The existence of post of information for legal advice and post of complaint for government services at the village level have strengthened the access of beneficiaries to legal services. The effectiveness of these institutions in providing legal service to community is suggested by a qualitative finding from Central Sulawesi.

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Case Study 2: The mechanism of complaint in Central Sulawesi

LPMS, a CSO working on justice and government sector, has strategically raised the awareness of local governance level in order to support program objective in community level. Indeed, this effort has been multiplied the impact of program in way it make good collaboration between bottom-up demand and top-down supply. This thing can be happens because LPMS have advantage of some of their staffs have wide relation with informal local leader and formal local leader, both in bureaucracy and local parliament.

The level of impact in community level can be seen in how people can speak their mind in diskusi kampong or other meeting organized in community level. In case of BOS (education financial support by government), mother can expressed their perspective related to their children rights to go to school free of charge. The good impact at community level probably related to the quality of community cadres that already have trusted by other community member. This trust apparently shows that she/he already has good capacity anyway. In some village, diskusi kampong has arranged by community leader instead of CSOs. Furthermore, the participants have used the diskusi kampong to discuss various issues instead of focus on governance issue as LPMS organizational mandate.

In providing complaint mechanism for the community, LPMS established P2IPM (Center for Information and Community Complaint). P2IPM has great mechanism in giving information about civil rights as well as respond on people complaint of the civil rights violation. The program staffs call this mechanism as “lazy advocacy”. This term has used to explain the minor role of LPMS in facilitating the claim process from community member or other people who want to make a complaint on certain public services issue. It is also represent a well organized pattern which already developed by LPMS, so they do not need to give more effort to convey the complaint when the particular government unit has proactively ask LPMS about what is the complaint and what should be done then. This mechanism relies on 3 sources of contact, such us: by phone/SMS; directly to LPMS office in Poso; or in P2IPM in 21 villages around Poso district. Since this complaint mechanism really count on communication devices, the advocacy process to connecting people need with government bodies resources had become more cheaper, so it sturdily the mean of “lazy” in lazy advocacy.

Beneficiaries’ participation in village discussion activities was also found to significantly strengthen villagers’ capacity to access justice. The survey indicates that the participation has resulted villagers to be able to bring their complaint and protest to government officers, leaders in the village as well as to CSOs staffs (Community Organizers) or trained paralegals or cadres. The impact is highest at beneficiaries’ capacity to bring report about their legal cases to CSOs (64.2%), followed by their capacity to bring cases to village head (54.5%) and the government apparatus (46.9%).

Chart 4.18: Beneficiaries Access to Village Forum Seminar/Discussion for Laws and Rigths

Beneficiaries participation in series of village discussion has brought some remarkable impact on the capacity of community to access justice. As shown by Chart 5.15, a strong evidence of how this participation affect beneficiaries capacity to report complaints to various duty bearers in the village levels.

Chart 4.19

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2.1.The revitalization of government legal services

Community access to justice was also strengthened due to some Project’s efforts to revitalize the role of government to deliver legal service. Some evidences from the qualitative study support this issue. Legal capacity activity that has been conducted by KPI through the facilitation of the coordination meeting and seminar for government key stakeholders and NGOs in Kendari has strengthened the Women and Children Empowerment Integrated Services Centre (Pusat Pelayanan Terpadu Pemberdayaan Perempuan dan Anak/P2TP2A) in the provincial level of Southeast Sulawesi. Led by Women Empowerment Bureau (BPP) of the provincial level government, P2TP2A that has not yet function as expected, started to provide grievance handling mechanisms for cases regarding violence against women and children. P2TP2A involves many government agencies related with social affairs, health, community empowerment, education, manpower, cooperative, agriculture, public hospital, and police, as well as several NGOs, such as KPI, LBH Kendari, Bagansiar dan Alpen.

Administrator of P2TP2A claimed that the stakeholders’ coordination meetings have promoted a strong interaction and coordination among government related agency as well as between government and CSOs. The network that has been established through P2TP2A has proven to be effective in facilitating a partnership forum that will provide a grievance handling mechanisms to victims of domestic violence. Besides, they were also equipped with technical skill of counseling and assistance for victims of domestic violence through a training for the companion of victims of gender based violence, especially domestic violence that was conducted for all LEAD Project’s stakeholders in three provinces of the Project in 2009. They declared that the technical skills were the practical things that they need to perform their task as duty bearer and they never learnt before. Stronger commitment of the government on this institution was also indicated by the fact that since 2010, Women Empowerment Bureau (BPP) has allocated the budget of Rp. 400.000 per month for the two paralegals to handle cases. This commitment indicates the prospect of a sustainability networking and partnership between government and CSOs through P2TP2A.

III. ON THE STRENGTHENED LEGAL SERVICE COMMUNITY

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Main Findings

Beneficiaries perception. The effectiveness of LEAD Project’s legal services is indicated by the very high number of beneficiaries who claim that the project has been contributing a usefull impact.

The performance of CSOs. In varying degrees, the CSOs are relative successful in their efforts to provide legal services. However, the effectiveness of the grievance handling mechanisms varies across sectors and across province

Community-based organization. These mass organization play the role of information center and post of complaints in the community.

Government legal service. P2TP2A was very effective in providing grievance handling mechanism. An integrated partnership among various stakeholders allows the institution to take a necessary and integrated action to provide remedies the grievances.

Pro-poor legal aid organization. The presence of pro-poor legal aid organization has significantly strengthened community access to legal service, not only to formal justice system but also to the non-litigation process

The highest level of legal empowerment is the provision of legal services to accommodate the correspondingly increased level of both legal awareness and the legal capacity of the target claim holders to access justice. The effectiveness of the legal services in the provision of the grievance handling mechanism would strengthen the claim holders’ access and their capacity to reach a just and satisfactory legal solution.

Meanwhile, in general most beneficiaries (45.1%) admitted that the LEAD Project is very useful for them. In total, almost 90 percent of beneficiaries confirmed the usefulness of the Project in their life.

Chart 4.20

They admitted that due to the Project, their legal knowledge, legal capacity and access to legal service are strengthened. Impact on legal knowledge in some beneficiaries means knowledge on gender rights and on domestic violence, or knowledge on land rights and issues about the environment, or knowledge on legal rights related to cases in courts, or knowledge on rights related to free government services such as in health insurance (JAMKESMAS), education service, or other cash transfer. While impacts on legal access include access to information on legal issues and dispute resolution processes, access to free

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legal assistance provided by the police or government apparatus, or CSOs, and access to free government services. Finally, impact on access to legal service include more attention of traditional leaders to upholding gender rights, more responses from government to complaints, positive changes in the way government services are delivered and accessed, and positive changes in the way people can access legal information and support to solve their problem, that is people use CSOs, COs and Post of Information for access to justice.

Chart 4.21

1. THE CAPACITY OF CSOs STRENGTHENED

In varying degrees, the CSOs are relative successful in their efforts to provide legal services. However, the effectiveness of the grievance handling mechanisms varies across sectors and across province. In Central Sulawesi the local CSOs have provided both legal services and legal information through their trained paralegals as the duty bearers in the community. In Southeast Sulawesi for example, mass organizations act as citizen assistance communities with varying degree of success and its corresponding share of contextualized local problems, such as the degree of effectiveness, and the challenge of sustainability. The best practice was the establishment of the P2TP2A in which an integrated partnership was established. In North Maluku, a shelter (safe house) was erected in Ternate for victims of domestic abuse who are mostly women. The local CSOs have successfully trained local women and men as paralegals which have provided the beneficiaries as claimholders concrete legal services such as legal assistance. The obstacle is that the legal assistance provided has not yet fulfilled the expectations of the local marginalized groups.

When community is aware of their rights, they started to express their needs over a just, transparent and accessible conflict resolution mechanism in order to access justice over their grievance. The presence of legal service in providing an effective grievance handling mechanism would strengthen claim holder’s access to appropriate forum as well as their capacity to obtain a satisfactory remedy. However, the effectiveness of grievance handling mechanism varies across sectors and across locations

In Justice and Gender sector, effective grievance handling mechanism is weak in the village level, but strong in the provincial level. At the village level, many of the mass organizations that play the role as community legal services have lack of capacity to take necessary action to provide remedies for women as victims of gender-based violence. However, at the provincial level, the existence of P2TP2A supported

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by KPI’s community organizers and LBH Kendari’s lawyers has provided an effective grievance handling mechanism. However, the existence of effective grievance handling mechanism does not guarantee that the claim holders will receive appropriate remedies. A domestic violence case shows that after receiving legal assistance from P2TP2A, the victim refused to continue her case since she did not want her husband to send to jail.

In Justice, Land and Natural Resources sector, grievance handling mechanism in quite strong. The mass organizations that provide legal service to the community have been able to take necessary actions for remedies. The mass organizations in this sector have strengthened people’s access toward non-formal as well as formal justice system

Finally, in Justice and Legal Service sector, effective grievance handling mechanism, especially through litigation, was already strong. LBH Kendari has been able to provide pro bono legal aid to claim holders with various legal cases.

2. COMMUNITY-BASED LEGAL SERVICE STRENGTHENED

In Southeast Sulawesi, the result of LEAD Project’s activities that aim at strengthening community legal awareness, while at the same time strengthening the capacity of duty bearers to perform an effective grievance handling was the formation of mass organizations in the grass-root level that soon acts as forum for claim holders to seek remedies for their grievance. During the LEAD Project, SWAMI has succeeded in facilitating the so-called Organisasi Rakyat (People Organization) in 20 village locations of the Project. While KPI has formed its under-bow organizations at the community level, the so-called Balai Perempuan (Women’s House) throughout the 15 villages where LEAD project were implemented. Both Organisasi Rakyat and Balai Perempuan consist of the citizens in the village while the administrators are chosen by the members through voting.

These mass organization play the role of information center and post of complaints in the community. Organisasi Rakyat functions as Post of Information on Human Rights in the village level while Balai Perempuan plays the role of information center and post of complaints for gender-based violence cases in the village level. Ever since those mass organizations were formed, People require legal information to the leaders or cadres of the organization; many grievance were also reported to the organization by local people.

The existence of Organisasi Rakyat is found to be effective in strengthening people’s access toward legal services. It has been quite effective in providing legal assistance to claim holders at village leve. Several informants who are the leaders of Organisasi Rakyat in Napalakura Village explained that ever since People Organization was formed, people always come to the organization to report legal cases. Not only reporting cases regarding land and natural resources, e.g. for Jati wood stealing, but people also reported their domestic violence cases or other crimes cases that they face. When the case needed to be processed through litigation system, the leaders will refer the case to the police. Therefore the present of People Organization has strengthened people’s access toward non-formal as well as formal justice system.

Similar report also received from leaders as well as members of Organisasi Rakyat in Kontu Village. They testified that the present of this institution has also provided secure environment for them to take

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legal action whenever needed. They were no longer afraid to work on the land that is still in dispute with the government. The existence of Organisasi Rakyat were also beneficial to the process of strengthening legal awareness. Project’s activities such as village discussions and film watching were easily conducted through this institution by the facilitation of the Community Organizer (CO) from SWAMI.

The effect of trainings for leaders of People Organization combined with the present of People Organization was incredible. The case of the movement of People Organization in the two villages in Raha, Napalakura and Tangkumaho, showed that when people are aware of their rights, know how to manage their environment, and have the mass organization as the media/instrument for expressing their opinion and make movement, they can have a high bargaining position to protect their land and natural resources. In the two location mention above, the People Organization worked together to oppose a private company who was going to destroy mangrove forest in the location in order to build fishponds. People started to understand the function of mangrove forest and why it is needed to be protected.

Case Study from Southeast Sulawesi: Collective Action - The Functioning of Mass Organization as Legal Service

Legal empowerment activities conducted by SWAMI at Muna Island, a CSO working on land and natural resources issues in Southeast Sulawesi, has brought a significant impact. The legal awareness activities, such as village discussion and film watching, combined with legal capacity activities, especially legal training for key stakeholders at the village, have promoted the establishment of a mass organization called “Organisasi Rakyat” (People Organization) that facilitated by SWAMI’s field worker, the “Community Organizer” in the late 2007. The leaders of Organisasi Rakyat were chosen by the villagers and are very respected in the community. They were trained by SWAMI to deliver legal knowledge and information to villagers, especially the members of Organisasi Rakyat, as well as to provide legal assistance to villagers with legal cases.

In early 2008, a private company started to work over the land, destroying the Mangrove forest in Latawe village next to Napalakura and Tangkumaho in order to build fishponds. Latawe was not the LEAD Project location, therefore there was no Organisasi Rakyat formed in the village. “The company has not yet communicated about the project to villager, and there was 7 ha of Mangrove forest has been destroyed,” said an informant. “Meanwhile, people could not be able to demo the private company since it received support from the head of village,” he continued.

Knowing what had happened in its neighboring village, the leaders of Organisasi Rakyat in Tangkumaho started to take some actions. Their intention was actually to ask Latawe’s head of village about the exact border between the two villages in order to avoid the expansion of the private company to Tangkumaho. However, villagers of Latawe started to get influenced by this action and created some tensions to the private company as well as village government. Finally, people of Latawe showed their resistance against the project by asking the company to stop and flee from the location.

To respond to the situation the Village Head of Latawe called the people of Latawe and leaders of Organisasi Rakyat Tangkumaho to have a meeting with him and the private company. This invitation was quickly responded by the leaders of Organisasi Rakyat Tangkumaho. In order to gain bargaining position, they however called leaders of Organisasi Rakyat Napalakura to help providing legal assistance to villagers. In the meeting, they proven that the company has no legal mandate to conduct its project and asked the company to stop it.

Leaders from Tangkumaho and Nalapakura started to provide the legal assistance, firstly by providing information regarding the importance of Mangrove forest in their island to village people as well as in the meeting with Latawe Head of Village and the private company. They questioned the company for not socializing the plan to community at the first place.

They also claimed that the area in Latawe, Tangkumaho and Napalakura are the preservation areas, while some are adat forest. Therefore the private company’s project need a legal permit from the government, which is the certificate of AMDAL. They required the company to show their AMDAL certificate and found that the document they have was only a letter of field visit for processing AMDAL certificate.

Later, they brought the copy of the letter to SWAMI to have a legal consultation. SWAMI encouraged the two organizations to continue the legal facilitation and promised to give support anytime is needed.

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After almost a year trying several times to approach the villagers, by asking support from Head of Villages, even to try to do the project in other village, which are in Tangkumaho and in Napalakura, the private company finally stop the project and flee from the location. Meanwhile, People started to understand the function of mangrove forest and why it is needed to be protected.

3. GOVERNMENT LEGAL SERVICES STRENGTHENED

P2TP2A was very effective in providing grievance handling mechanism. An integrated partnership among various stakeholders allows the institution to take a necessary and integrated action to provide remedies the grievances. Strong networking among P2TP2A stakeholders is indicated by a clear and systematic job description among them. Ever since the P2TP2A was formed in the end of 2008, KPI has been supporting the institution by providing 2 community assistants that regularly work at P2TP2A office. Domestic violence cases that were reported to KPI are delivered to P2TP2A and handled by the KPI paralegals using the non-litigation procedure. However, legal cases that need to be handled through litigation procedure will be handled by lawyers from LBH Kendari. Meanwhile, Bagansiar is supporting the Office of Social Welfare to provide Home Shelter for victims of domestic violence at the provincial level. A case study from Southeast Sulawesi highlights this issue.

Case Study: An integrated approach of P2TP2A has strengthened women’s access to justice

The presence of P2TP2A in Kendari city has significantly strengthened the legal service for women with legal cases. P2TP2A is an integrated service, which partly facilitated by the LEAD Project. Domestic violence cases that were reported to KPI are delivered to P2TP2A and handled by the KPI paralegals using the non-litigation procedure, then passed to LBH Kendari’s lawyers for the litigation process. Meanwhile, Bagansiar is supporting the Office of Social Welfare to provide Home Shelter for victims of domestic violence at the provincial level. The presence of this service has benefited a claim holder with a divorce case, Ibu Eltje.

Ibu Eltje who was legally married for 37 years to her husband who was government officer. In 2008, her husband wanted to divorce Ibu Eltje because their child knew that he was cheating on Ibu Eltje. Ibu Eltje was very confused and did not know what to do at that time. However, a friend who had same experience and received legal assistance for her case from KPI, a CSO works for gender issues, suggested her to bring and report her case to KPI. She would like to find justice over her case hoping that the divorce case file would be rejected by the Religious Court.

KPI’s Community Organizer started to help Ibu Eltje by providing related legal knowledge and promised her to process the case to formal legal justice system. She accompanied Ibu Eltje to meet a lawyer of LBH Kendari. With the assistance of LBH Kendari’s lawyer, Ibu Eltje received legal information related to her case. She was explained about her rights as citizen, rights to receive income from the husband after the divorce, and rights to receive legal assistance. She was also offered a legal assistant from LBH Kendari. The fact that the legal service was free was the main factor for Ibu Eltje to continue the mediation process of LBH Kendari.

After 12 times of court trial, the Judge agreed on the divorce file. The Lawyer adviced Ibu Eltje to bring the case over the High Court of Religious Court. The result was the same, the High Court agreed on the divorce file for the reason that there is no hope for the marriage. Currently, the case was brought to Kasasi process.

4. PRO-POOR LEGAL AID ORGANIZATION STRENGTHENED

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The presence of pro-poor legal aid organization has significantly strengthened community access to legal service, not only to formal justice system but also to the non-litigation process. This finding is confirmed by the case of LBH in Central Sulawesi. It is interesting that LBH in Central Sulawesi prefers to use non-litigation process rather than litigation process to solve any legal cases. LBH Sulteng has widened their perspective of defending the rights of the poor by utilizing out-of-court processes. They believe as a community organization that non-litigation process can deliver an effective grievance handling mechanism.

For this non-litigation activity, LBH Sulteng has been active in facilitating and enhancing peasant based community group in Central Sulawesi. LBH Sulteng also has been using BHB (Bantuan Hukum Berjalan/Mobile Legal Aid) to reach out the most-needy in the community. They focus on giving, not only legal assistance, but also legal awareness to community. However, when it is needed, they will provide legal aid through the litigation process.

Meanwhile, the impact of LEAD Project on strengthening the pro-poor legal aid organization is also shown by the functioning of LBH Kendari, that was established by the facilitation of LEAD project and has successfully built 3 legal posts in Kendari area. LEAD project has successfully prepared and strengthened LBH Kendari not only in giving legal information but mainly in providing legal services to the community. However, the sustainability of LBH Kendari is at risk if LEAD project’s phase-out is not very well planned, e.i., not considering the transitional period for LBH Kendari to learn to be self-reliance.

Besides, LBH Kendari was experienced a serious problem with their client due to a change in project’s coverage area of the project’s implementation. During phase I, the coverage area is the whole province of Southeast Sulawesi, while during the phase II, it only covers Kendari City. One land dispute which was facilitated by LBH Kendari during the phase I implementation was stopped due to LEAD requirements to narrow down the area coverage during the phase II implementation. For this reason, LBH Kendari’s credibility was challenged.

IV. SOME CHALLENGES

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Main Findings Sustainability of local duty bearers. sustainability of LEAD Project Citizen Advisors

is important, while strong commitment from the local justice actors is a challenge.

CSOs capacity varies. While the magnitude of the various legal cases faced by claim holders also varies, the presence of CSOs in the village to provide legal service does not always guarantee that claim holders who access legal assistance from CSOs will obtain a satisfactory remedy over their grievance

Community-based legal service. Their legal capacity to provide legal assistance is still weak, however, they perform effectively in delivering legal knowledge and provide legal advice to claim holders in the society.

Satisfactory remedy. The presence of legal service does not automatically fulfill the hope of local community over the grievance

The highest level of legal empowerment is the provision of legal services to accommodate the correspondingly increased level of both legal awareness and the legal capacity of the target claim holders to access justice. The effectiveness of the legal services in the provision of the grievance handling

5.1 SUSTAINABILITY OF LOCAL DUTY BEARERS IS IMPORTANT

One of the big challenges faced by the LEAD Project in the efforts of strengthening claim holder capacity to access justice is the sustainability of LEAD Project Citizen Advisors. A qualitative finding indicates that strong commitment from the local justice actors is a challenge. For example, some local cadres who were trained by KPI, a CSO in Southeast Sulawesi working on gender issues, were having low commitment toward their role as citizen legal advisor. The reason is due to the fact that they consider the role as an extra and voluntary job while the poverty requires them to seek for economic activity. Joining LEAD activities means that they need to put aside some amount of time that can be economically valuable for them. Some findings from the qualitative research highlight this issue.

Qualitative highlight from North Maluku: Sustainability of paralegal matters

Daurmala has succeeded in strengthening the capacity of target groups such as women from the local communities who become trained paralegals, such as, in Tobololo (Ternate) and Tobelo (North Halmahera). These trained paralegals in turn have succeeded in raising the legal awareness among women and men concerning anti domestic violence as part of gender equality and human rights or more specifically, women rights. These successful efforts do not mean that they did not face any obstacle in increasing the legal capacity of the local community. The first obstacle is in recruiting local women to become paralegals since many have their own work and some are not interested. After several efforts in the first phase of the Lead Project, Daurmala finally succeeded by recruiting women from the local community who have the potential to become local leaders. The second obstacle is in maintaining these women from the local community to be trained paralegals. Maintaining active paralegals especially local women is not very easy. Since becoming a paralegal is considered a service to community, only the real committed and dedicated are willing to stay.

This is overcome by the examples given by the current trained women paralegals, though few in numbers, are still able to deliver results in the context of providing concrete legal assistance to victims of violence especially domestic violence. It is interesting and significant to note that not only women are victims of domestic violence, but there are also 2 (two) cases in which men are the victims. Both of these victims are men in North Halmahera. But this fact does not indicate that women are no longer victims of domestic violence. The vast majority of victims of domestic violence are women. These trained active paralegals are hoping to get more training especially in the field of legal knowledge and legal practise in order to give legal assistance to victims of domestic violence. The future lies with these few and dedicated trained local paralegals in assisting the local communities to access of justice.

However, sustainability should not only in be viewed within the project framework, it should be viewed in goal achievement paradigm. The importance of this perspective is suggested by the experience of KPKP-ST in Central Sulawesi. They claim their strategy as innovative as they try to use existing resources to

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achieve their future objective. As they have already had 30 information centers from previous project with USAID, they started to use those center as the information and complaint center for women under the LEAD Project. They avoided redundancy by creating new centers and tried to utilized the facilities available. Therefore, sustainability also can be seen as the smart effort to connect various resources in different place and time to get one stiff objective.

5.2 CSOs LEGAL CAPACITY NEED TO BE STRENGTHEN

Other challenge is the fact that the capacity of CSO as duty bearers varies. While the magnitude of the various legal cases faced by claim holders also varies, the presence of CSOs in the village to provide legal service does not always guarantee that claim holders who access legal assistance from CSOs will obtain a satisfactory remedy over their grievance. A case study from North Maluku highlights this problem.

Case Study from North Maluku: CSO’s Lack of Capacity Affect Their Ability to Provide Legal Service

In January 2009 for the first time Bapak Khaidir and several of his fellow vegetable growers from the village of Sasa which is located next to the city of Ternate, came to the office of LML. They took the initiative since they heard that LML is providing legal assistance to marginalized groups. They were pleasantly surprised when LML informed them that there is no financial costs that they have to give. LML is providing legal services for them free of charge.

The next step was village discussion organized by LML were carried out six times in total in the community. The village discussions were focusing on the legal rights of citizens especially concerning land ownership and land utilization which were highly relevant to the Sasa vegetable growers community. The content of the village discussions were not only on legal rights of land ownership and land utilization but also on the litigation processes that they have to face if they have to undergo formal legal court proceedings.

The community of Sasa vegetable growers comprising of 60 families are locked in land dispute case with the State phone company Telkomsel. Telkomsel has the legal certificate of land utilization (hak guna bangunan) until October 30th, 2010. Telkomsel has sold the 4 ha of land at the foot of Mount Gamalama. As it turns out Telkomsel has sold the land to several new owners including Telkomsel’s local employees, and in turn, these local employees have sold it to others including military officials. The new owners have tried on several occasions in July 2009 to physically evict the vegetable growers by force. No open conflict has occurred but terror has happened several times. These terror include mysteriously putting live grenades in front of private homes, stamping on the land fence, and military officials openly coming to the land site.

The Sasa vegetable growers were called by the local police several times. They were verbally and in some cases, physically threatened to give false accounts. Both men and women were called by the police to give formal legal accounts, but strangely, not all the community members were called. Some members were called by the police several times, some not at all. Their land dispute case is still pending since according to the local Distric Attorney Office, their legal case is not yet well prepared by the local police. Thus their case is still handled by the local police. No legal court proceedings have been conducted. The Sasa community is suspicious that they are being put in legal limbo intentionally by the local legal authorities.

The Sasa community are highly appreciative of the legal awareness, legal capacitiy, and legal services activities carried out by LML from 2009 until now. Legal councelling and legal assistance were actively provided by LML during the police interrogations in the past year. However, the community are expecting that LML will not only passively waiting for the next step of the legal proceedings initiated by the local legal authorities but that LML will also take the initiative and actively proceed with the legal steps necessary to ensure the legal rights of the community in the future. They are somewhat dissapointed that LML are so far unwilling to fulfill their hopes and expectations. They are hoping that the legal status of the land will be clear and so they know what kind of future lies for them. This is the reason why for the Sasa vegetable growers, LML is currently performing as a ‘rescuer’, but not yet as a ‘saviour’ for them.

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What does a community need is also crucial and need to be considered by CSO in implementing legal empowerment at the community level. This capacity is vital for CSO working with the grass-root. Gocefa’s experience highlights the importance of this. Gocefa has succeeded in strengthening the organizational capacity of the local fishing community and the local street vendors by establishing cooperatives in cooperation with the local government. Gocefa is particularly successful in increasing both the personal capacity and the organizational capacity of the minority community in Tabanga by assisting them in various endeavours such as, small scale entrepreneurship trainings, in education, in health, and providing legal assistance in the community land status negotiations. The obstacle is that for the minority community in Tabanga the most important factor is their land status and it takes a while for Gocefa to realize this fact. All other assistance are secondary to their first and foremost interest and concern. It is fortunate that Gocefa finally realizes this and provide the community with legal assistance.

Also important is the capacity of CSO to maintain a balance power relation with its stakeholders. LML, a CSO working on justice and legal service sector in North Maluku has trained volunteers especially law students to become legal assistants in providing legal assistance to diverse marginalized groups. LML has facilitated beneficiaries’ meeting especially for marginalized communities to increase their capacity to understand the litigation process. LML has continuously assisted the marginalized communities and has been able to have good relations with the local government though sometimes they have real problems with the local legal authorities in their efforts to assist the marginalized groups. However, the power relations within the local political context tend to favor the more privileged and powerful social strata compared with the socially and economically marginalized groups. This does not give favorable conditions for LML to provide legal assistance to the marginalized communities.

5.3 LEGAL CAPACITY OF COMMUNITY-BASED LEGAL SERVICE NEED TO BE STRENGTHENED

Although the presence of community-based legal service, which is very much run by LEAD Project Citizen Advisors, has very much strengthened the capacity of claim holder to access justice, their legal capacity to provide legal assistance is still weak. They perform effectively in delivering legal knowledge and provide legal advice to claim holders in the society. However, to be able to provide an effective grievance handling mechanism, specific legal skill and institutional set-up are needed.

Qualitative highlight from Southeast Sulawesi: The challenges to the effectiveness of Community-based Organization

Due to legal training activities conducted by KPI in every LEAD Project’s village, as many as 25 people in each village, which consist of 70 percent female and 30 percent male villagers, were trained on gender relation, gender biased in law (the law of marriage) and domestic violence on women and children. The participants of the legal training were the embryo of mass organization in the village, called Balai Perempuan (Women House). They later on became the administrator and legal cadre in the organization that act as the duty bearer that will take necessary actions to provide remedies for the grievance brought by claim holders

While the existence of Balai Perempuan as information center and a post of complaint was quite effective, it existence as grievance handling mechanism was not. There are challenges in order to see this institution plays the second role effectively. First, lack of capacity of the organizers to provide legal assistance. This has led many of legal cases received by Balai Perempuan could not be facilitated by its organizers or legal cadres, thus needed to be delivered to KPI head office in Kendari to be handled.

Second, it was difficult to have strong commitment from the legal cadres of Balai Perempuan to perform their role in providing legal assistance to local people with legal case. The reason is due to the fact that they consider the role as

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an extra and voluntary job while the poverty requires them to seek for economic activity. Joining LEAD activities means that they need to put aside some amount of time that can be economically valuable for them. Therefore, one of the recommendation is to link the legal empowerment project to economic empowerment one, such as PNPM or P2KP, to give incentives for them to participate in legal empowerment project.

Third, Balai Perempuan is also not capable yet to do the documentation of success story based on legal cases that were facilitated, thus there is no written report and evidence of what has been done. Documentations by Balai Perempuan or KPI officers in the form of film, photo or story narration might become very useful to support legal awareness activities as well as policy advocacy in the future.

Another highlight comes from the experience of LML, a CSO working in justice and legal service sector. Basically, LML is highly successful in providing access for local marginalized groups to legal services, especially, legal consultations for marginalized groups, such as, landless peasants who are hired to become vegetable growers, in their land dispute with the state phone company, Telkomsel, in Sasa (Ternate). LML is continously providing legal services, in addition to legal consultations, it also provides legal assistance through the litigation process. LML is also highly praised in their sustained efforts to provide legal assistance when conflicts and threats were directed against the local marginalized groups such as the community in Sasa, Ternate. The obstacle is that LML cannot meet the high expectations of the local marginalized groups since it cannot actively initiate the legal proceedings to have the legal dispute finally settled permanently. LML is currently providing legal assistance when the local marginal groups are involved in legal disputes initiated by their legal opponents. Thus they are giving reactions but so far no initiative nor pro actively seeking legal convictions. This is the reason why the land dispute case is still pending and it is still with the local police. No legal proceedings have been initiated yet.

5.4 THE PRESENCE OF LEGAL SERVICE DOES NOT GUARANTEE SATISFACTORY REMEDY

Some qualitative findings suggest that the presence of legal service does not automatically fulfill the hope of local community over the grievance. The effectiveness of grievance handling mechanism depends on the several factors. First is the capacity of local CSOs in providing legal assistance. Second is the social and political context which can influence: a) power relations between CSOs and its key stakeholders, including state legal apparatus and other government agencies in providing legal services to beneficiaries, such as indicated by the case study from Sasa, North Maluku; and b) gender power relation in the community, such as indicated by the case from Kendari, Southeast Sulawesi, where a woman with domestic violence case decided to cancel the litigation process in order to avoid her husband being sentenced to prison due to economic and social considerations.

The first factor is indicated by the case of Gocefa in North Maluku which is not yet able to provide satisfactory remedies to the beneficiaries. Gocefa has provided legal assistance in assisting the minority community in Tabanga by assisting them in land status negotiations with the Sultanate of Ternate and the local government especially the newly elected Vice Mayor of Ternate who is also a close relative of the current Sultan of Ternate. The current situation is still pending in the sense of there is not yet any litigation process concerning this land status. Negotiation is still pending since there are several factors which contribute to this uncertain situation. These factors include the minority community in Tabanga is factionalized and is not yet able to come to the negotiation process with the Sultanate of Ternate in one solid voice. The post riots conditions in North Maluku have gradually improved but the relations between various religious groups are still a sensitive matter in the community.

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Case Study from North Maluku: A challenge for CSO to provide satisfactory remedies

It was seven years ago in 2003 that Ibu Naomi and her family settled for the first time in the village of Tabanga, which lies ‘behind the mountain Gamalama’, several miles outside the city of Ternate. She is a ‘newcomer’ in the village but it does not take a long time before her husband and herself become leaders in the Christian community of Tabanga. She is a Christian from Paningbar, Southeast Maluku and she is a teacher by profession. Well articulated and relatively comparatively well educated, it is not a surprise that she quickly becomes the ‘new’ leader in this small community.

The small Christian community of Tabanga originated from Halmahera and they first settled in Tabanga circa 1948. They were invited by the previous Sultan of Ternate and were granted land for settlement which was documented in a form of a formal letter from the then Sultan to the then Village Head of Sulamadaha (Tabanga is part of neighboring Sulamadaha). Unfortunately, the original letter was lost and no other legal document existed. For more than five decades (fifty years) the small Christian community of Tabanga was able to coexist peacefully and harmoniously with their surrounding Moslem neighbors. This community was even given the privilege by the Sultan of Ternate to carry out the honorable role of carrying the Sultan in his royal chair for the weekly Fridays’ prayers from the Sultan’s palace to the Sultan’s Mosque.

Unfortunately, in the year 1999, came the violent clashes and social political unrest between the Moslem and the Christian communities which first originated from Ambon in Central Maluku and quickly spread to North Maluku as well. The Christian community were afraid for their lives and they quickly left their settlement in Tabanga and fled to neighboring areas such as Manado in North Sulawesi. They came back in 2003 because they were invited to return by the Sultan of Ternate and The Mayor of Ternate who instructed the Village Head of Sulamadaha to request the Christian community of Tabanga to return to their former village. To their ‘surprise’, after they returned, this small community realized that their land has become much smaller in comparison to the time before they were forced to flee their village. During the period of 1999 till 2003, a large portion of their land was settled by their Moslem neighbors or newcomers to the area.

This change in their land settlement made this community aware of the necessity and the urgency to have a legal document concerning the status of their land. In their efforts to claim their legal right of the land, they have made several efforts including negotiating with the previous mayor of Ternate and the local village head. Both of them advised the community to negotiate with the Sultanate of Ternate since this land is owned by the Sultan of Ternate. However, when they came to the BPN (Badan Pertanahan Nasional), the StateLand Agency, they were advised to make a land certificate since based on State Law, there is no longer customary land ownership. In order to get a land certificate, the community has to get a letter of endorsement from the local village head. But this village official was unwilling to do so, out of deference for the Sultan of Ternate. And thus they came ‘full circle’. The most recent development in their negotiation efforts with the Sultanate, the community has the pledge of the current Vice Mayor of Ternate who is a relative of The Sultan to discuss and find a legal solution for their land status.

Until now there is not yet any concrete positive development in negotiations since the small Christian community is factionalized within itself. Ibu Naomi is considered as a ‘newcomer’ and not from the original families who first settled in Tabanga in circa 1948. Though well organized and well regarded by Gocefa who is providing her and the community with various legal awareness, legal capacity, and legal services activities in several sectors such as, fisheries, health, education, and small scale entrepreneuship, she is not universally accepted as the leader nor the representative of the Christian community in Tabanga. This factionalization made it difficult for this community to negotiate as one voice with the Sultanate of Ternate concerning their claim for the legal status of the land in Tabanga.

It is also interesting that Gocefa has made significant and important various activities across sectors to strengthen the institutional capacities of this particular community but the most important concern of this community still remain the legal status of their land. It is precisely this concern that Gocefa has not yet succeeded in meeting the high expectations of the small Christian minority of Tabanga.

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main findings integrated - 221210

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