Table of Contents1. Foreword ................................................................................................................................32. Summary ................................................................................................................................43. Introduction ...........................................................................................................................64. Aims of Case Study ................................................................................................................85. Methodology ..........................................................................................................................86. Mercy Corps Program Development in Maluku.....................................................................87. Program Activities ................................................................................................................11

7.1 Emergency Grants...................................................................................................117.1.1 Non Food Item (NFI) Distribution ...............................................................127.1.2 Shelter............................................................................................................137.1.3 Shelter Assessment .........................................................................................157.1.4 School Rehabilitation.....................................................................................157.1.5 Water/Sanitation ............................................................................................16

7.2 Economic Empowerment........................................................................................187.3 Capacity Building ...................................................................................................197.4 Summary of Projects Funded ..................................................................................21

8. Civil Society .........................................................................................................................228.1 Peaceful Change......................................................................................................22

8.1.1 Do No Harm.................................................................................................248.1.2 Neutral Spaces ...............................................................................................248.1.3 NGO Community Center .............................................................................268.1.4 Direct Approaches to Peace Building .............................................................288.1.5 Language........................................................................................................29

8.2 Accountability.........................................................................................................298.2.1 Modeling Transparency and Accountability ...................................................308.2.2 Accountability to the Community .................................................................308.2.3 Sphere Standards............................................................................................318.2.4 NGO Directory .............................................................................................328.2.5 Mercy Corps Newsletter ................................................................................328.2.6 Media ............................................................................................................328.2.7 Accountability to Donors...............................................................................33

8.3 Participation............................................................................................................348.3.1 Local Partner Operational Costs ....................................................................358.3.2 Government Relations ...................................................................................358.3.3 Relations with Other International Agencies..................................................378.3.4 Coordination .................................................................................................38

9. Local Partners.......................................................................................................................399.1 Start Small ..............................................................................................................419.2 Projects Locally Driven ...........................................................................................419.3 Response Time........................................................................................................419.4 Projects in Remote Areas.........................................................................................419.5 Uneven Capacity of Local Organizations ................................................................429.6 Training and Workshops .........................................................................................439.7 Mechanisms for Feedback .......................................................................................439.8 Project Successes and Weaknesses............................................................................43

10. Processing Grants ...............................................................................................................4410.1 How the process works .........................................................................................4510.2 Guidelines.............................................................................................................4510.3 Time Frames for Projects.......................................................................................4610.4 Transparency .........................................................................................................4710.5 Protection of Staff Members .................................................................................4710.6 Misuse of Funds....................................................................................................4710.7 Language Challenges.............................................................................................49

11. Building a Team .................................................................................................................5011.1 Background...........................................................................................................5011.2 Staff Development ................................................................................................5111.3 Trust .....................................................................................................................5211.4 Composition of Staff.............................................................................................5211.5 Taking Account of Individual Potential.................................................................5211.6 Role of Expatriate Staff .........................................................................................53

12. Security ..............................................................................................................................5512.1 Local Security Management Team (SMT).............................................................5612.2 Separation of Responsibilities................................................................................5612.3 Separation in Times of Tension .............................................................................5712.4 Overcoming Freedom of Movement Challenges ...................................................5712.5 Relations with Military .........................................................................................58

13. Lessons Learned and Recommendations.............................................................................5814. Future Directions for the Program in Maluku....................................................................6015. Conclusion.........................................................................................................................6116. Appendices .........................................................................................................................6217. Glossary .............................................................................................................................6218. Bibliography.......................................................................................................................62

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1. ForewardThis case study is aimed at those wishing to obtain a greater understanding of Mercy Corps’ programin Maluku over the past two years and how civil society principles can be used to strengthen emergencyand recovery activities. It is also targeted towards those interested in understanding one model of grantsmanagement. It examines the opportunities and challenges of working through local partners in unsta-ble environments. Finally, the study aims to provide a critical overview of the strengths and weaknessesof the program as well as demonstrate how these are being addressed. Few of the ideas are truly originaland many approaches have been implemented successfully in other programs with Mercy Corps orother agencies. What we believe has made this program unique and of particular interest is the way inwhich many approaches and ideas have been integrated together to create the program.

Many people have contributed ideas, experience and knowledge towards the writing of the case studyincluding staff in the Maluku and Jakarta offices, and donors, particularly USAID (OTI/DAI-SWIFTand OFDA). Mercy Corps headquarters staff has also supported the development of the study. In par-ticular the Civil Society Program team and the Global Emergency Operations team, both of who con-tributed time and resources to ensure the development of the program. Special acknowledgementshould go to the team in Maluku for their commitment to improving the lives of those affected by con-flict in the province.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all those who have contributed time and resources intomaking this study possible and hopefully enabling us to create and implement better, more effectiveprograms, with greater impact in the future.

Anna YoungMercy Corps Indonesia

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2. SummaryMaluku is a province of Indonesia located approximately 2,000 km from the capital Jakarta. Unlikemost of the rest of Indonesia, which is predominately Muslim, the population of Maluku is approxi-mately equally divided between Muslims and Christians.1 The situation there has been highly unpre-dictable since conflict erupted in the province in January 1999. The subsequent 18 months were char-acterized by fighting between largely local groups of Muslims and Christians, the destruction of thou-sands of houses, the displacement of approximately 500,000 people, the loss of thousands of lives, andthe segregation of Muslims and Christians. The following 12 months saw periodic eruptions of vio-lence, which appeared more targeted and pre-meditated, designed to keep suspicions high and peoplesegregated. As the situation became calmer on islands, apart from Ambon in the province, people start-ed to return home in these areas. In spite of numerous negotiations and the signing of a peace agree-ment in February 2002, tensions on Ambon Island remain high and the conflict has in no way beenbrought to a conclusion.

The Mercy Corps program, established approximately 15 months after the conflict began, has targetedthe needs of vulnerable conflict affected populations working in most of the major sectors of humani-tarian aid and economic recovery. The organization distinguishes itself from other internationalhumanitarian agencies by providing all assistance through local partners, believing that this is not onlya more effective means of providing relief and recovery assistance, but also presents an opportunity tostrengthen local capacities and promote peaceful change from within the community.

In line with Mercy Corps’ worldwide approach, the program has made use of the Mercy Corps CivilSociety Framework (see appendix 7) and used its three guiding principles of peaceful change, account-ability and participation to reinforce and strengthen all program activities. In addition, Mercy Corpshas used the Do No Harm principles of the Local Capacities for Peace Project to help ensure that allprogram activities support opportunities for strengthening peaceful relationships and building a morestable environment in the province, while avoiding activities that might inadvertently undermine thepeace process. When local partners and/or the community propose more direct peace-building initia-tives, Mercy Corps works to support, encourage and develop these as well, all the while making surethat they remain integrated within the overall framework of the program.

A defining characteristic of the Maluku program has been the integrated approach taken towards allaspects of the program, which has also enabled Mercy Corps to work effectively in an area of high ten-sion and sporadic violent conflict. Mercy Corps has a unified team made up of Muslims and Christiansthat works together with local partners to identify the needs of individual villages and communities anddesign effective programming. Civil Society principles have been fully integrated throughout the pro-gram rather than established as a separate sector. Mercy Corps continually emphasizes that there is oneprogram with different sector activities within the program, all oriented towards achieving a commonvision of meeting the needs of conflict affected people and strengthening the Maluku community’s abil-ity to solve its own problems in a peaceful, accountable and participatory way.

Commitment to building local capacity, both internally and with local partners, means that CapacityBuilding activities cut across all sectors of the program and reinforce Mercy Corps’ countrywide objec-tive of providing assistance to those affected by conflict.

1 For more information on the recent history of Maluku, see the reports written by the International Crisis Group on Relief Web(http//:www.reliefweb.com).

Frequent reviews and strategy meetings within the team have achieved a high degree of flexibility toensure that the program remains relevant to the changing situation and assistance is not limited to onetype of situation (i.e. relief, recovery or development). Grants solicited from donors have usually beenflexible in such a way to enable Mercy Corps to respond to the needs that have been identified withinvarious communities and not limited by strict criteria.

This case study develops the following themes with the attempt to open up broader debate on the issues:

• Development of the Maluku program within the context of the conflict, and description of the sectors in which aid has been provided, as well as the process and mechanisms through which the services have been delivered

• Analysis of some of the activities that have been founded on Mercy Corps’ Civil Society principles

• Discussion on how and why local partners are selected• Oversight of how the team has been developed• Discussion of the challenges and opportunities when working through local partners in

an unstable environment• Overview of the security situation and how it has impacted Mercy Corps’ work

By documenting the history of the program, Mercy Corps aims to examine concepts and lessonslearned in Maluku that may be applicable elsewhere and to generate discussion on the methodol-ogy by which Mercy Corps integrates Civil Society principles into relief and recovery programs. 5

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3. IntroductionThe province of Maluku (see Appendix 1 and 2 for maps) has been plagued with recurrent violenceover the past three years. While official figures differ, estimates of those killed range between 4,000 and6,000, many of them civilian. Of the province’s 2.1 million population2, between 400,000 - 500,000have been displaced,3 the majority of these internally displaced persons (IDPs) are living on AmbonIsland, which, although tiny compared to the rest of the province, is the provincial capital and has beenthe center for trade, economic and political activity for hundreds of years.

While there are many factors thathave lead to the creation of the con-flict, including political, ethnic, eco-nomic and cultural factors, it isalong religious divisions betweenMuslims and Christians that theconflict is most often and most easi-ly characterized. However, this sim-plistic presentation of the problemcan be misleading as global politicsensure that this small group ofislands receive far more attentionfrom the outside world, bothWestern and Islamic, than wouldnormally be expected.

The effects of the conflict have beenwidespread and have impactedalmost everyone in the province,regardless of whether they have beendisplaced. Major consequences of the complete segregation of Muslims and Christians on AmbonIsland and in many other places in the province include the breakdown of government services, the col-lapse of an economy that was previously dependent on trade and tourism and the widespread destruc-tion of housing and infrastructure. Transport between the islands has been seriously disrupted andprices for transport and basic commodities are often unaffordable for people with little or no income.

Mercy Corps first established a presence on Ambon Island in April 2000, 15 months after the violencebegan. The decision to work in Maluku was in line with Mercy Corps Indonesia’s overall strategy toassist conflict affected4 populations in Indonesia.5 Needs assessments in December 1999 and January2000 indicated, not only that there were large scale unmet needs on the islands, but also that considerable untapped local capacity existed for local organizations to meet the needs of the communities themselves.

2 ICG Asia report No 31, February 20023 According to government sources there were 332,578 displaced persons within the province in March 2002 although thesefigures are believed to be inflated through movement of IDPs. An additional 100,000 people have left the province.4 The working definition of ‘conflict affected’ is used for families and individuals who are unable to support themselves whenthe primary cause for this can be attributed to the conflict. This can include IDPs, returnees, host communities as well as peo-ple who have remained in one location but have suffered negatively (i.e. through loss of livelihoods etc). 5 As an entry point into Indonesia, Mercy Corps identified two groups of particularly vulnerable people as a result of the recent eco-nomic and political upheavals; the urban poor and the conflict affected. Even before the conflict started, Maluku was identified as aregion with little international humanitarian support where the context was appropriate for Mercy Corps program activities.

A map of Maluku province. Mercy Corps’ three fieldoffices are located in Ambon, Masohi (Seram) andTual (Southeast Maluku).

HeadingTwo years later, the Mercy Corps program is largely characterized by its integrated nature, run by ateam that consists of members from both religious groups. Mercy Corps also takes an integratedapproach to program interventions, refusing to be limited by traditional categories of relief, recoveryand development activities. Activities are targeted towards actual needs, determined at a village level,rather than following pre-defined categories of assistance according to external assessments of the con-flict. So it is possible, for example, to implement an emergency shelter rehabilitation project while atthe same time funding a local organization to provide micro-credit funds to IDPs.

The other cornerstone for the program has been the Mercy Corps defined civil society principles ofaccountability, participation and peaceful change,which have been used to reinforce, add value to andsupport all program activities. While there are no stand-alone Civil Society activities, all programs aredesigned to support the principles of peaceful change (making use of the Local Capacities for Peace/Do

No Harm6 approach), accountability and participation.This is reinforced through the commitment to strengthenthe capacity of local organizations, both in the short termand for the future.

Between April 2000 and April 2002, Mercy Corps hasfunded 308 projects on all the major islands in Malukuprovince.7 It has targeted over 206,000 beneficiaries in the following sectors: non-food item (NFI) distri-bution, shelter, water/sanitation, emergency liveli-hood support, economic empowerment (micro-credit, fisheries, agriculture), school rehabilitation,capacity building and some individual peace build-ing activities (see Appendix 5 for detailed break-down). Of these, 178 projects have been funded onAmbon Island and 130 on other islands, which corre-sponds approximately to the population centers of conflict affected people in the province. The

program has supported over 1,200 returning families with temporary houses and implementedwater/sanitation projects in Southeast Maluku for over 5,000 returnee families.

The program is still expanding and there is considerable room to strengthen program activities andexisting systems and build the capacity of local partners. However, there has been considerable interestin the creation of a case study to provide an understanding of what has so far been achieved, to identifyexisting weaknesses within the program and outline future directions.

6 The Do No Harm principles are a set of principles developed by the Local Capacities for Peace project to enable organizationsto better analyze the way in which humanitarian interventions can support the peace process or aggravate tensions and con-flict. (see 7.1.1 Do No Harm, for a more detailed analysis of the way the program has worked to make use of these tools)7 With the exception of Maluku Tenggara Barat, a district that is largely unaffected by the conflict, although economic vulnera-bility exists.

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Mercy Corps’ commitment to working on the outer islands poseslogistical challenges.

4. Aims of Case Study

5. Methodology

6. Mercy Corps Program Development in Maluku

The case study aims to provide a detailed description of the program in Maluku and demonstrate howcivil society principles can be used to strengthen an emergency and recovery program. It is also targetedtowards those interested in understanding one model of grants management. It examines the opportu-nities and challenges of working through local partners in unstable environments. Finally, the studyaims to provide a critical overview of the strengths and weaknesses of the program as well as demon-strate how these are being addressed.

It is not an evaluation of the impact of the program inMaluku, although several staff indicated that this shouldbe a priority for the program team in the coming monthsin order to better plan future program interventions forthe province. Staff members currently working in Maluku have recommended that a follow-up report should be written in a further two years or at the end ofthe program period.

The case study is aimed primarily towards all those withinMercy Corps who have been interested in and supportedthe program from a distance and wish to gain a betterunderstanding of the details; how it has evolved and someof the ideas and approaches that have been piloted. As adocument of the evolution of the program, it also capturesexperiences and lessons learned. It may also be of interest

to other Mercy Corps program staff elsewhere, that are managing or setting up similar programs.

Because of the broad audience and the aim to create a manageable and readable document, the numberof attachments has been kept to a minimum. People interested in additional supporting documentationshould contact Mercy Corps headquarters or the Ambon office directly.

The report has been written with input from many sources. Mercy Corps staff, current and previous,have contributed considerable time to sharing their ideas on the program; past, present and future.Ideas and comments were also solicited from groups of local organizations that have been engaged inthe program and representatives from DAI and OFDA who have supported the program and MercyCorps’ approach from the beginning. While documentation has not always been perfect, many ideasand understanding of the program’s evolution have been gained from past reports as well.

(See appendix 3 for a chronology of significant events in Maluku and the Mercy Corps program.)

Mercy Corps established a presence in Maluku following a needs assessment in December 1999 andJanuary 2000 led by the Country Director and Grants Program Manager. In the assessment, MercyCorps identified the need for economic empowerment activities aimed at IDPs and others who had lost

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IDP Women in Southeast Maluku at adistribution for non food items after theyhave been displaced from their homeson another island.

their livelihoods because of the conflict, but who, with small economic inputs, could be expected tobecome self sufficient, even in their displaced locations. Mercy Corps also identified large sectors of thepopulation who, while not displaced, were economically vulnerable because of deterioration in theeconomy, loss of markets and lack of freedom of movement. Thus Mercy Corps defined its target groupas vulnerable conflict affected persons living in Maluku. At the time of the assessment there was alull in the fighting and no perceived need for emergency assistance.

The assessment team also determined that sufficient local capacity existed for Mercy Corps to operate aprogram through local partners, providing that sufficient attention was also given to capacity buildingactivities. The original intention was to see what could be funded through local partners and thenestablish other programs to fulfill unmet needs.

Donors were initially reluctant to fund activities,partially because they were skeptical as to whethersufficient local capacity existed to support a grantsprogram, but also because they were concerned thatit would not be possible to serve both Muslims andChristians equitably or to access segregated areas ofthe islands. Therefore it was necessary for MercyCorps to fund initial operational costs through pri-vate money. In addition USDA funds were com-mitted from Jakarta for economic empowermentgrants to local partners.8 This flexibility of donorfunds and ability to commit private resources(including the time of the Civil Society programmanager from the USAID/PVC InstitutionalStrengthening Grant) was critical to being able toset up a timely response in the region.

Following a period of violence during June and July of 2000, Mercy Corps identified a clear need toaddress emergency needs for the recently displaced. Mercy Corps re-allocated additional USDA fundsfrom the Jakarta grants program to fund emergency grants and started to look for additional funds inorder to be able to cover operational costs. USDA funds were only available for direct grants and itbecame imperative to find additional sources of funding. A member of Mercy Corps’ GlobalEmergency Operations (GEO) team was sent to the region to help establish the emergency programand raise funds. The two principal International Non-Governmental Organizations (INGOs) alreadyworking in Maluku implemented all programs directly and Mercy Corps was faced with the need toprove the viability of working through partners. As Mercy Corps program activity increased, with suc-cessful implementation of multiple grants to local partners, OFDA agreed that this was a practical andeffective approach. In addition they supported Mercy Corps’ approach, which would not only providehumanitarian assistance, but also opportunities for inter-religious dialogue, advocates to government

8 USDA funded Mercy Corps to implement a grants program for local partners in Java that began in 1999. Due to theweakness of the Indonesian currency, more funds were available than originally foreseen. Mercy Corps applied for andreceived permission to reallocate some of these funds to other vulnerable areas in Indonesia including Maluku.

An emergency school on Buru Islandmade out of tarpaulins provided byMercy Corps and local partners allowsthese children to sit for their exams.

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and growth of local capacity, something which was not taking place through the existing humanitarianprograms. With the approval of the OFDA grant in late November 2000, Mercy Corps was able togear up operations.

Emergency assistance focused on meeting the NFI, shelter and water/sanitation needs of the displacedfor the first six months of the OFDA program. However, as Mercy Corps received more detailed infor-mation about IDPs returning home on other islands where the conflict had been short lived or lessintense, the strategy expanded to include prioritizing the needs of those who could return to recovertheir livelihoods and rebuild their homes. The economic empowerment activities continued to play animportant role in assisting conflict-affected communities on Ambon Island, although it is only recentlythat these activities have started on other islands.

This strategy of assisting the vulnerable, conflict-affected people and targeting assistance according toneed has remained constant throughout the life of the program in Maluku (see Appendix 6- VisionStatement). However, Mercy Corps has also defined its role/strategy as maintaining the flexibility to fill niches not covered by other organizations or the government. Kim Maynard from the Cuny Center described this approach as “opportunistic in a positive sense” when she visited to research Peace Building in Short Term Programming in February 2002. When Mercy Corps identifies these niches or finds donors with particular interests, it endeavors to add value to the core strategy with additional programs.

Deciding where to work geographically throughout the province has been in part determined byhuman resources and the challenges of covering an area that contains so many dispersed islands.Geographic coverage has expanded as the team has grown and developed more experience. WhileMercy Corps funded its first project off Ambon Island on Seram Island in December 2000, serious cov-erage of other islands did not start until later in 2001. Southeast Maluku was targeted first because ithad received little previous assistance.

Following an evaluation of local organizations, based in Southeast Maluku and on Seram Island, MercyCorps decided to open offices in these areas in June 2001 and March 2002. These offices haveundoubtedly improved the quality of service that Mercy Corps is able to provide to beneficiaries,because of the ability to give better oversight to program implementation by local partners and to pro-vide more training at the field level. It has also allowed the program to work more easily with partnersbased in these locations but who were unable to travel to Ambon to receive training and informationabout projects.

Since receiving funding from OFDA and demonstrating that local capacity exists to respond to human-itarian needs, there has been no shortage of donor funds for the program. However due to the fact thatMaluku is considered primarily an emergency program, funding has never been available for more than6 months at time. This has meant that considerable pressure has been put on the team to produceresults very quickly in order to meet grant deadlines. On the positive side it has meant that the pro-gram has been able to remain flexible to adapt to the changing needs of the situation in different partsof the province. The program has avoided becoming fragmented because of a clear vision statement(Appendix 6) developed early on in the program, as well as a single grants mechanism through whichall local grants are awarded (see Section 7).

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7. Program Activities

7.1 Emergency Grants

Since August 2000 Mercy Corps has awarded two distinct types of grants to local organizations: emer-gency and economic empowerment (see Appendix 5). The target group was defined as conflict affectedwhich allowed Mercy Corps and its partners not only to assist IDPs and host communities (those tradi-tionally considered most vulnerable in conflicts), but also those returning home and people who may

have remained in one location but lost their traditionallivelihoods and access to markets due to the conflict.Flexible supportive donors were critical in enablingMercy Corps to target assistance to the most vulnerablein these groups.

From the outset Mercy Corps determined the need todevelop an integrated program in order to best meet theneeds of the population. Rather than establishing twoor more teams to work on separate sectors, one teamwas established with sector specialists, who could takeon projects in their sector as well as act as advisors tothe rest of the team. The intention was to ensure thatthe whole range of needs of a community were borne inmind when developing a project intervention. As isoften the case in protracted emergency situations, many

displaced people were no longer in need of emergency items such as pots and pans. Their needsfocused on longer-term issues such as water and shelter but also access to micro-credit or seedsand tools. An example of this approach can be seen in the village of Latuhalat on Ambon Islandwhere, over the course of the past 18 months, Mercy Corps has funded local partners to provideNFI items to IDPs, shelter partitions for families living in collective centers and a water projectwhich benefits not only the IDPs but also the host population.

To complement this integrated approach a single grant mechanism was designed so that funding com-ing from different donors could fit into the same mechanism without confusing NGOs or creatingunnecessarily complicated systems. At various points Mercy Corps has had three or more grants fromdifferent donors for the province, with each donor having different requirements either for funding spe-cific sectors or specific geographical areas. One grants mechanism meant that the Program Managercould allocate a code identifying the donor without causing any disruption to the process. The grantsdatabase allowed accurate reports for each donor to be easily extracted. The only hitch in this mecha-nism was discovered when running multiple grants from the same donor, requiring separate reports,which led to the need for an adjustment in the coding system in order to be able to report easily oneach grant.

The emergency grants sector has remained extremely flexible and responsive to the changing securitysituation. Mercy Corps has funded three main sectors under its emergency program: non-food item dis-tribution, shelter and water/sanitation. An outline of the evolution of each sector is provided below.

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These IDP women cook using the equipment distributed throughlocal partners.

7.1.1 Non Food Item (NFI) Distribution

The initial emergency program consisted of non-food item distribution to IDPs who had been dis-placed following the fighting in July 2000. Mercy Corps and its local partners aimed to distributeessential kitchen and non-consumable hygiene sets to vulnerable families. Focusing on distributions wasrelatively simple and thus ensured a rapid response, especially bearing in mind the relative inexperienceat that point of many of the local organizations. Initially many NGOs assumed that a person was enti-tled to receive assistance because s/he was an IDP. Needs assessments and training have helped organiza-tions develop criteria for determining vulnerabilityand entitlement to assistance.

As the program has developed, Mercy Corps hascontinued to fund the distribution of NFI wherenecessary. However, although the violence has continued in the province, there has been no large-scale displacement since July 2000. Thereforethe number of NFI projects has decreased, withcurrent distributions targeted primarily at vulnera-ble families who have returned home and receivekits including seeds and tools, mosquito nets, buckets etc.

Monitoring trips have shown that distribution ofitems such as stoves can not only help meet theneeds of the family, but also allow them to start togenerate a small income by baking food items tosell. After monitoring the initial grants the need forthorough assessments was emphasized. For exam-ple, in some areas distributed stoves remainedunused because the families were unable to affordthe cost of fuel.

Although Mercy Corps anticipated a diminished need for NFI distribution as existing needs were met,the unpredictability of the situation also emphasized the need to be prepared. From December 2000,two NGOs, one Muslim, one Christian, were funded to warehouse basic kitchen and hygiene com-modities in readiness for rapid dispersal. Initially these stored kits for up to 2,000 families on each side.As new displacement appeared less probable they have since been reduced to enough for 1,000 familieseach. These kits have proved useful when there has been an emergency situation and on-hand supplieshave enabled local partners to distribute more rapidly. In addition they have also been used for small-scale distributions, when the local partner identifying the need did not have the financial mechanismsto purchase commodities themselves. In such cases they receive a receipt which allows them to collectthe commodities directly from the warehouse and make the distribution immediately.

While at times of severe tension there has been difficulty purchasing some items on Ambon Island,Mercy Corps’ NGO partners have in general had no difficulty purchasing all emergency items locally.Wherever possible Mercy Corps encourages partners to procure locally, providing that the price is rea-sonable, thereby supporting the local economy.

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Bringing Organizations Together

When Mercy Corps established the emergencywarehouses it selected one Muslim and oneChristian partner. Although these two organi-zations had had no contact since the fighting,they were asked to submit compatible budgetsand project frameworks. The heads of theorganizations were a little taken aback butwere prepared to work together. Their relation-ship has developed over the past two years,sharing ideas on procurement and assistingeach other when working in mixed communi-ties. Most recently they established a consor-tium of Muslim and Christian organizationsto advocate for the needs and rights of conflictaffected people on Seram Island. While theymay never have met without Mercy Corps’introduction, many of their joint projects arenow conducted without Mercy Corps support.

The initial round of shelter projects solely addressed the needs of IDPs living in communal accommo-dation or with host families. Many of these families were living in conditions with only 1-2 squaremeters of covered living space per person, far below the SPHERE minimum standards of 3.5-4.5square meters per person.9 Most projects targeted communal living spaces such as warehouses or gov-ernment buildings, where IDPs had been living, often for six months or more. Although adding thepartitions often did not necessarily provide the minimum living space due to lack of available space,partitions did give families their privacy back. In some areas the partitions reunited families where cul-tural norms dictated that Muslim women could not sleep in the same room as men who werenot close family members. Monitoring also indicated that tensions within the camps had reduceddrastically after project implementation; sites were quieter in the evenings so people could sleepand children had a place to do homework.

As the program became more established and thesituation grew calmer outside Ambon Island, MercyCorps determined that it should also meet the shelterneeds of people returning home when this was safe andpossible. Following the shelter assessment (see below)Mercy Corps was able to determine areas of possibleintervention and work with NGOs to establish projects.

The basic shelter kit provided by Mercy Corps consistedof a cement foundation, wooden walls, partitions forthree rooms and a roofing material made out of palmleaves for a space of 4m x 5m. While not permanenthousing, these structures last for at least two to threeyears, which enables families to replace temporary mate-rials with more permanent ones as they reestablish their

livelihoods and incomes. The design was agreed upon in consultation with other INGOs, local organi-zations and local communities. It was important for the structures to last long enough to allow familiesto return, but not supercede the standard of poor families who might have remained in the area. The

9 The SPHERE Minimum Standards in Disaster response are a set of standards created through inter-agency collabora-tion to improve the quality of assistance provided to beneficiaries in the main sectors of emergency relief. (See 7.2.3SPHERE Standards)

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Before and after. IDPs displaced during the fighting in1999 and 2000 often had to live for many months incollective centers, sometimes with over 1,000 peopleliving together in a warehouse. Mercy Corps fundedNGOs to provide partitions for individual families.

7.1.2 Shelter

This woman and her family, living incollective centers on Ambon Island,now have a little privacy of their own.

government housing kits provide more substantial materialbut are approximately the same size. While the govern-ment was at first reluctant for Mercy Corps to provide lesspermanent materials, discussions led them to understandthat this would allow Mercy Corps to fund a larger num-ber of shelters for return in a shorter time period than thegovernment could provide.

The biggest achievements have been in Southeast Malukuwhere Mercy Corps has funded the successful constructionof 380 family shelters with excellent community participa-tion. However, elsewhere some of the shelter projects havebeen more problematic. The main problems were causedby unclear messages from the government who, afterMercy Corps funded a project in an area, stated that they would build permanent housing but withoutannouncing a time-scale for the project. Communities chose to wait for the permanent houses providedby the government, not realizing that they could take many months or even years to materialize.Another problem has emerged when people used to receiving cigarettes, food or even cash for commu-nity labor to construct the homes, became suspicious of the lack of payment by NGOs. This was evenmore acute in communities where people were struggling to meet their daily food needs and did nothave spare time to work on their shelters. Where NGOs have had good and transparent communityrelations these problems have been satisfactorily addressed through community meetings and open dia-logue, but considerable effort is still needed to support the development of these community skills withlocal partners. Further delays in project implementation have been caused by the challenges of trans-porting materials between islands when they are not locally available.

Mercy Corps sees shelter as one of the main needs of the returnee community, and it continues to prioritizeshelter projects, while developing new guidelines thatwill have strict requirements. Grants will be funded forlonger periods to allow local partners to engage in proper participatory and community development activities. The team is also analyzing the current shelterpackage, which contains substantial amounts of wood,to see whether it is possible to make alterations toinclude more locally available and environmentally sustainable materials.

A major discussion took place within Mercy Corpsabout whether projects should be funded to provideindividual, temporary shelters to long-term displaced

IDP families living in crowded situations. After much debate it was decided that while these peoplewere living in less than perfect conditions, it was more important to focus resources on those familieswho were able to return. The concern also existed that individual housing might lead IDPs to be moreinclined to stay in temporary resettlement areas. Mercy Corps firmly believed that while some people

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Mercy Corps monitors the construc-tion of shelter for a returnee familyon Buru Island.

The rehabilitation of a school inWest Seram.

7.1.3 Shelter Assessment

7.1.4 School Rehabilitation

might never return, many would return once the conflict had ended and that it was too early to relo-cate people permanently. This theory has been confirmed on islands other than Ambon where the situ-ation has been peaceful for a considerable period of time. Furthermore Mercy Corps’ experience inMaluku has led the team to conclude that local NGOs constructing shelters need strong communitydevelopment skills as much they needs technical skills and that more time needs to be committed tosupporting this development.

It became apparent in early 2001 that most of the attention in Maluku focused on Ambon Island.Visits to the province by central government officials and international donors rarely traveled outside ofthe island. Subsequently humanitarian policy was influenced by the situation solely on Ambon, ratherthan taking the whole situation into account. In June 2001 Mercy Corps received funding fromOTI/DAI-SWIFT to conduct a shelter assessment on all the main islands apart from Ambon,10 to iden-tify the current living conditions for IDPs and the impediments to return where the situation was calm.The report was made public and published in English and Indonesian.11

The main findings of the report illustrated that the main constraints to return were: security (listed asthe major concern for those still displaced), damage to housing, damage to schools, lack of economicopportunities and lack of transportation.

The assessment provided several opportunities for additional activities funded by Mercy Corps(see School Rehabilitation below) and allowed local partners to identify areas where they couldassist with housing reconstruction. It also enabled other donors and organizations to determineprogram activity in coordination with Mercy Corps, such as the ICMC ‘go and see’ program toenable IDPs to make an informed decision about returning, a program resulting directly from the find-ings of the study.

The shelter survey identified the need for school rehabilitation as a key obstacle to return. Mercy Corpsestablished minimum standards for school rehabilitation including the provision of three classroomsand a teacher’s room per school, with the intention that the government would eventually take responsibility for the reconstruction of the rest of the school. The project also allowed for the provisionof desks and chairs once classrooms were completed. OTI/DAI-SWIFT have also funded several additional school rehabilitation projects directly through local NGOs identified in coordination withMercy Corps.

10 Ambon was not included partly because much more information was readily available for the island but alsobecause of the instability on the island, which clearly indicated that there would be no return in the short-term.11 Mercy Corps Maluku Shelter/IDP assessment, August 31 2001

15

7.1.5 Water/Sanitation

Projects funded in this sector were designed to improve standards of hygiene in collective centers andreduce tensions between IDPs and host communities where resources were overstretched. Similar toshelter projects, successful implementation depends not only on solid knowledge of technical systemsand appropriate interventions, but also on a commitment to community participation.

Unlike the fairly standard shelter interventions, water projects have varied widely depending on theneed of the village/community, cultural practices and the length of time that the project is expected tolast. Water projects have ranged from digging wells to installing pump systems, building reservoirs andinstalling gravity fed water systems. The only condition has been that the system is sustainable and thatthe community comes up with a plan on how to maintain it after installation. On several occasionsMercy Corps has coordinated with Medicins Sans Frontiers Belgium (MSF-B) to help local organiza-tions replace water trucking with more durable solutions. (See 7.3.3, Relations with OtherInternational Agencies)

As Mercy Corps continues to fund and support waterprojects increased emphasis will be placed on the devel-opment of low-tech solutions. Although rainfall is rela-tively frequent throughout the year, the Malukan peopleare remarkably resistant to rainwater collection systemsfor unclear reasons. With the arrival of the new expatri-ate water/sanitation technical adviser, Mercy Corps willattempt to address this and help communities to makebetter use of this resource.

Sanitation projects have largely focused on latrines,many of which have been in collective centers. In areaswhere people are returning, Mercy Corps’ partners haveoften been asked to construct communal latrines to beused until families are able to build individual ones.Monitoring visits have demonstrated that buildinglatrines is often not sufficient to ensure their proper

use, particularly if people have been used to defecating on the beach or in the forest. In order to address these issues more effectively, Mercy Corps has included a hygiene promotion sector in its latest round of grants, which will target children in areas where Mercy Corps is providing latrines andwater systems.

Another means of ensuring correct and proper usage of water and sanitation facilities is by establishingcommunity management systems. The local partner, with support from Mercy Corps if required, workswith the community to identify means of maintaining the system. This also helps to create a betterunderstanding of humanitarian assistance programs, not as ‘anugerah’ (gifts from the gods), but asresource transfers, that need to be carefully and responsibly maintained.

16A woman cleans dishes at one of thecommunal water stands installed by alocal organization. Women and childrenare the main water carriers in Maluku,often carrying water over great distancesmany times in one day.

17

Air Salobar is a small Muslim enclavesandwiched between two large Christian com-munities. The coastal road from Ambon to thesouthwest of the island goes through the village,which rises steeply from sea level before reach-ing forest and farmland. These farm areas areconsidered to be insecure because of skirmisheswith neighboring villages. The village used tobe mixed, but Christians fled as the conflicterupted and Ambon Island became increasing-ly segregated.

When Mercy Corpsfirst visited the village inMarch 2001 some 400families were still livingthere. They told programstaff that their village usedto get water trucked in bya government companybefore the fighting, butthat this had stopped.Women in the village nowhad to make a trip 300meters down a hill to fetch water.

In addition to the water issues there is highyouth unemployment and poor access to thevillage. The only way to enter the enclave is byboat, and in order to trade produce or bring inessential items, or for children to travel toschool, people must pay a high fee for a privateboat service. Costs are prohibitive for manyfamilies without cash income. Many familieshad left the village because of these difficulties,and others were considering leaving as well.

Mercy Corps’ initial assessment of the areainvolved transect walk driven interviews withfamilies, interviews with the head of the vil-

lage and his wife, the imam from the localmosque and representatives from women’sgroups and others. The major problem they allprioritized was water. Mercy Corps agreed toassist through a local NGO by providing themajority of the materials for a system thatwould meet much of the water need. A pumpsystem would provide water through standpipesto most families within 20 meters of theirhouse. Local people would provide labor and

sand for the cement as theircontribution. A condition ofthis project was that the com-munity establish a resourcemanagement committee tocollect a fee from all the families on a monthly basis(approximately 50¢ per family) to pay for electricity,maintenance costs and even-tual replacement of the pump.The committee has made useof these funds to start a smallmicro-credit project withinthe enclave.

When Mercy Corps visited the project eightmonths later the collection system was workingwell, families were delighted with access to thewater (which is available at different times ofthe day for different members of the village),substantial funds had been collected, and thevillage was starting a small trade system withits Christian neighbors and allowingChristians to travel through the enclave. Thevillage had managed to unlock the potential tohelp itself and requested no more materialinputs from Mercy Corps.

Project Profile: Air Salobar - A Sustainable Community Water Project

A program assistant talks to awoman filling buckets at arecently installed water tap inAir Salobar.

7.2 Economic EmpowermentGrants to local organizations for economic empowermentprojects (loans whether in kind or monetary which shouldbe paid back and then revolved to additional beneficiaries)have been some of the most challenging to implement inthe unstable environment of Maluku and a full impactassessment will be arranged for August 2002.

The program was developed in response to initial needsassessments, when local groups, government and localcommunities identified the need for capital as one of themajor gaps in service provision for vulnerable conflictaffected populations. The initial request for applicationssent out to local organizations was only for economicempowerment grants. The processing of these proposalswas interrupted by the eruption of violence and the pro-

posals were then put on hold in order to be able toprioritize the new proposals received for emergencyassistance.12

Initially it was intended that all non-emergencygrants should be paid back and revolved, whetherfor agriculture, fisheries or micro credit. This how-ever proved impractical, given the amount of aid

being provided by other NGOs, the lack of experi-ence of local organizations in revolving funds andfinancial management and the relatively smallmonetary value of agricultural grants. A distinctionwas later made between livelihood support (small-scale distributions designed to help make a familyself-sufficient: seeds and tools, stoves, etc.) and eco-nomic empowerment projects.

The primary objective of these economic activitieswas to inject resources into communities and pro-vide people with a means of living in the immedi-ate term. Mercy Corps assumes that not all organi-

18

12 In retrospect, had resources permitted, it would have been better to continue processing as the time eventuallytaken to approve these grants (eight months on average) caused a lot of frustration among the local NGOs and a lackof trust of Mercy Corps. Furthermore there were three supervisors of the proposals which led to inconsistency ofapproach especially given how new the local staff was at the beginning.

This woman has already paid back theloan she took out for $20 to establisha small ‘chili’ stall in a mixed marketin Ambon.

Making Full Use of Credit

One credit client visited by Mercy Corps hadused the funds to expand her small marketstall selling fresh produce. With the profits sherealized after repaying the loan, the familybought a sewing machine for the husband touse to make school uniforms. Often small-scaleloans provide IDPs with the hope they need tobe able to take control of their lives again.

Credit in Conflicts:

Many people have turned to small-scale mar-ket trading as a way to earn a living followingthe loss of many peacetime jobs and large-scaledisplacement. This has been supported by anincrease in the number of markets due to thesegregation of Muslims and Christians, andthe need to create parallel trading centers. One local partner was funded in October2001 to provide credit to 34 small tradersaffected by the conflict. By April 2002 theproject had revolved funds to an additional 35clients, the majority of which were womenand the NGO will continue to manage theloan funds themselves.

7.3 Capacity Building

zations will be sustainable after the conflict and focuses capacity building efforts on those with goodmanagement skills and demonstrated success in micro finance activities. Eventually Mercy Corps aimsto support these organizations to merge or to work together in a network, perhaps with combinedoperations and loan portfolios. These organizations are already talking of creating a combined databasefor clients in Ambon town to prevent overlap.

An additional challenge has been that, in some markets, too much credit has been provided with differ-ent terms and with little or no monitoring from other donors. This has been an ongoing challenge forMercy Corps.

In retrospect, had resources permitted, it might have been more appropriate to start project activities inMaluku in the emergency sectors and to spend more time setting up systems and doing sub-sectoranalyses to manage economic empowerment projects. However, by responding immediately to needs ofthe communities, a substantial number of people have benefited from the program and become self-sufficient again.

Mercy Corps’ final objective was to develop the capacity of local partners with the eventual aim of sup-porting them to become self-sustaining, accountable, transparent organizations, with sufficientcapacity to respond to the changing needs in Maluku. Mercy Corps also aimed to help them

form a cohesive voice to both local govern-ment and outside donors.

Capacity building is seen as an integratedpart of the program and supports all other activi-ties. While some activities such as workshops andcoordination meetings are held separately, most ofthe capacity building takes place during the dailyinteraction program staff has with partners. Becauseit is integrated into all activities, the case studyfocuses on primarily describing capacity buildingalong side of other sectors.

The large number of local NGOs in Maluku, andtheir diverse backgrounds, means that capacitybuilding covers a range of activities and aims. Fororganizations that were present and operatingdevelopment or conservation programs before the

conflict, priority training has included effective targeting in emergency settings and orientation toSphere standards. For newer organizations that emerged in response to the conflict, organizational man-agement and financial controls have posed more urgent training needs. In addition, as all local NGOsbuild or strengthen relationships with communities, an effort is made to help them design programsthat both build on their initial interventions, and look further into the future to support long-termdevelopmental aims.

19Putting Training into Effect:

While Mercy Corps is developing better waysto measure the impact of its training activities,the fact that almost all workshops are oversubscribed is a good indicator that NGOs per-ceive a value in the workshops. Recent discus-sions with local partners point to the trainingon financial management and micro credit asthe workshops that are most valued. OneNGO told us how useful the gender traininghad been, explaining how they had used thegender tools to develop a survey for interview-ing female headed households for a programfunded by another donor.

Capacity Building takes place in many forms and on many levels. Most of these methods are discussedin more detail under the Civil Society section of the study. Here is a summary of how Mercy Corpssees the process:

• One on One: Mercy Corps sees the process of reviewing, processing, funding and monitoring a grant as an opportunity to work one-on-one with the NGO to develop its capacity. Because Mercy Corps views its grantees as partners, the aim is to explain the process and regulations in a way which makes sense to them and to assist in the areas where they are still weak. There are a number of organizations that were inexperienced two years ago, but which have demonstrated the capacity and the commitment to learning new skills and Mercy Corps now considers effective, reliable partners.

• Group Training: Workshops and training in a variety of subjects are an opportunity not only to bring a specialist (whether from within Mercy Corps or external facilitators) to work with a large number of NGOs, but also for groups to share ideas with each other and for interaction between different religious groups to take place.

• Coordination Meetings: (see 7.3.4 Coordination) Coordination meetings not only serve to increase the amount of information sharing between agencies and avoid overlap. They can help reduce competition and increase cooperation. They also can help provide local organizations with skills in meeting management and facilitation, which can be used both internally and when they establish coordination networks of their own.

• Sending NGOs to Jakarta: On several occasions, Mercy Corps has funded local partners to travel to Jakarta to attend workshops and seminars being held there. Opportunities have included gender training, SPHERE standards, and a national IDP seminar and training by a Jakarta based NGO on organizational management. Although these workshops are less cost effective than when outside facilitators are brought to Jakarta, they provide Muslim and Christian organizations with an opportunity to meet outside of the intense Maluku environment and also build connections with other NGOs operating in Indonesia. When they return to Maluku, the organi-

zations are expected to organize follow-on workshopswith other local organizations and Mercy Corps to shareinformation and skills.

While many of those who attend capacity building work-shops are grantees as well, there are several local organiza-tions that do not wish or need to receive funding fromMercy Corps but are interested in attending workshopsand coordination meetings. One of Mercy Corps’ donorsreported that, while as a donor they have no particularpreference in how agencies work with local organizations,they like the approach of not limiting capacity buildingjust to funding partners. By bringing different actorstogether, Mercy Corps strengthens not only the capacityof its local partners but also the ability of local non-gov-ernment actors to act together to address the needs of thecommunity in Maluku.

20

Local partners and staff come to a partyto celebrate Christmas and Idul Fitritogether. Apart from the NGO communitycenter there are few places they cansocialize together.

7.4 Summary of Projects Funded

One of the challenges for a grants program with capacity building objectives is to separate out the tworoles and to make clear to local organizations, the difference between grants related activities and thosewhich are aimed solely at strengthening the skills and impact of NGOs in Maluku. This was often con-fusing for local organizations, which at first assumed that they should attend everything in order to findtheir way into Mercy Corps’ favor. At the early coordination meetings, frustrated NGOs asked whenthey were going to receive the funding guidelines. When organizations realized that these meetings werecompletely separate from the grants part of the Mercy Corps program, a few stopped coming but mostcontinued, realizing the value of sharing ideas and working to provide the best coordinated service pos-sible to the beneficiaries.

13 Mercy Corps has an ongoing worldwide relationship with the Conflict Management Group which has worked withMercy Corps on several initiatives in Maluku, starting with a comprehensive analysis of the context in April 2000.

21

Emergency Projects Value Added ProjectsEconomic Development Capacity Building

Nov

. '01

– A

pril

'02

Apr

il –

Oct

. '00

Oct

. '00

– M

ar. '

01M

ar. –

Nov

. '01 NFI distribution

Shelter for IDPs and returneesWater/Sanitation for IDPs and returneesSchool Rehabilitation

NFI distribution (after fighting in July 2000)

NFI distributionShelter (for IDPs)

Water/Sanitation

Revolving loan funds:Micro creditFisheriesAgriculture

Revolving loan funds:Micro creditFisheriesAgriculture

Revolving loan funds:Micro creditFisheriesAgriculture

Workshops

NGO center

Coordination meetings

Building links with government

An overall assessment of NGO activity takes place but no formal NGO capacity building

Publication of first NGO directory

Capacity building program begins

Establish Office in Tual

CMG13 needs assessment

CMG/CDR Community Reunification

Project Shelter assessment funded

NFI distributionShelter for IDPs and returneesWater/Sanitation for IDPs and returneesSchool rehabilitation

Revolving loan funds:Micro creditFisheriesAgriculture

Skills training for women

Workshops , NGO center

NGO capacity building initiative of local organizations by local organizationsCoordination meetingsBuilding links with governmentReflecting on Peace Practices Workshop, Evaluation by CDA

Establish Office on Seram Island

8. Civil Society

8.1 Peaceful Change

(See appendix 7)

The Maluku program has taken an integrated approach to using the Mercy Corps defined civil societyprinciples of peaceful change, accountability and participation. When evaluating the potential impactof programs, the team looks at the three core principles to assess not only short-term results but alsothe potential for longer-term results. Given the cross cutting approach Mercy Corps Maluku has takento integrating civil society, it is difficult to separate out civil society activities from the rest of the pro-gram. However the section below outlines some of the activities and approaches that are either particu-larly in line with Mercy Corps’ worldwide approach to strengthening civil society or activities whichhave been markedly strengthened by applying the civil society lens.

It is clear that Mercy Corps in Maluku supports thepeaceful resolution of the conflict and wants to ensurethat all activities reflect this commitment. Determininghow this support should be put into practice is more challenging. Not all parties support the government’sapproach to conflict resolution and terms such as reconciliation are highly political and often imply ‘sellingout’ to the other side’s cause. Both religious sides have attimes condemned efforts towards peace, indicating thatthey involve treachery and betrayal of one’s religious allegiance. People engaging with the “other side,” whetherthrough trade or dialogue, have been both directly andindirectly threatened and sometimes killed. This putsMercy Corps in a delicate situation regarding how toframe and implement its programmes. Mercy Corps’

primary mission in Maluku is to meet immediate basic human needs, and the organization has aresponsibility to protect its staff.

With this in mind, the question has often arisen: how can an organization support the peace processwithout jeopardizing its programme position in the area (access to people) or putting staff at risk?Mercy Corps long ago resolved this discussion internally, recognizing that Maluku is a situation inwhich traditional direct peacebuilding or conflict mitigation efforts could jeopardize both programmesand staff. The initial approach fell in line with the Do No Harm principles (see section 8.1.1 on Do NoHarm), as staff sought ways to support and nourish peaceful change in the province rather thanstrengthening already existing divides. The impetus for more direct peacebuilding has come from thelocal NGOs — as the NGOs have started talking more openly about supporting peace efforts, MercyCorps has been able to more openly support them. This approach has proven appropriate and success-ful and is discussed in more detail below.

In the context of an ongoing conflict in which the different factions are often divided over the issuessurrounding the conflict and about how to define and create “peace,” it is important to consider the

22

At the opening of the NGO CommunityCenter, NGOs have the opportunity tocome together to talk as well as use theresources the center provides.

implicit messages sent both by what an organization does and how it does it. Mercy Corps believes thathow things are done is as important as what you actually do. Attitudes towards peace in Maluku differboth across and within the Muslim and Christian sides, and pressure is often exerted on groups andindividuals not to mix with people from the “other side,” putting them at risk when they do. WhileMercy Corps wants to support efforts to end the violent conflict and build peace, it has decided tofocus on the provision of support for those who conduct activities in such a way that they supportpeace, rather than target efforts towards direct peace building—in other words, building peace throughprogramming. This approach helps Mercy Corps maintain its impartiality in providing humanitarianassistance and livelihood support. Perceptions are very important in contexts like Maluku, so MercyCorps tries to avoid giving the impression that the organization is making political statements that

might compromise its work as a humanitarian agency.

Consequently, Mercy Corps in Maluku has integrated peace-buildingcomponents into its program in a number of ways, most of which areimplicit rather than explicit, but which underscore the commitment topeaceful change. It has set an example by being the first internationalNGO to have a mixed team of Muslims and Christians working out ofone office in a neutral area of Ambon town, which is especially difficultin a city that is almost completely segregated. For many local organiza-tions that come to the office, it is the first time they have met peoplefrom the other religion since the beginning of the conflict. Thiscreates, of course, a highly sensitive environment until peoplehave gotten to know each other and started to re-establish rela-tionships. All capacity building and peace building activities,such as training workshops and coordination meetings, are onlyheld if people from both communities are able to attend. Thismeans that during times of tension most of these events are postponed.All proposals are reviewed by Mercy Corps staff from both communi-ties to prevent bias and promote transparency, and when possible,

mixed teams of Christians and Muslims monitor projects together on other islands where there is morefreedom of movement.

Mercy Corps’ approach to peace building in Maluku is also practical rather than theoretical. WhenMercy Corps began its program two years ago, there was very little coordination and a lot of competi-tion and suspicion between local organizations. As a result of its efforts to bring people from differentcommunities together, Mercy Corps has seen a number of partnerships develop between NGOs work-ing in different communities, not to mention the sharing of ideas and experiences which have helped toimprove programming and build confidence in the possibility of living and working together again inthe future—a key goal of peace building.

It is also important to understand that Mercy Corps’ public stance on peace building has changed asthe organization has established relationships with local organizations and government. While staffmembers still place the emphasis on humanitarian aid and economic recovery when talking to mediaand in the communities, it is now possible to talk far more openly about conflict management andpeaceful change with local partners and government than it was a year ago. This can largely be attrib-

23The NGO CommunityResource Center situated ina neutral location for allNGOs to be able to comeand use.

8.1.1 Do No Harm

8.1.2 Neutral Spaces

uted to the development of trust between local groups and with Mercy Corps staff members, and thecommon understanding that supporting peace does not mean that Mercy Corps will support any onepolicy on peace, or that by supporting peace it is necessary to compromise one’s religious affiliations (orneutrality in the case of Mercy Corps).

All expatriate staff in Maluku had previously received training in the Do No Harm principles developedby the Collaborative for Development Action (CDA) from the ‘Local Capacities for Peace Project.’ Thestrategy for the Maluku program was developed in a way that was intended to support these principles,to look to enforce existing links/connectors between different stakeholders and avoid creating/enlargingalready existing divides in the province. A major contribution to this was the development of a reli-giously mixed team that was able to represent the interests of the vulnerable on the islands from bothreligious groups (see section 11 on Building a Team). Teaching the team to analyze potential interven-tions from this perspective was challenging at first. One of the best examples came when developing ashelter strategy for return. Local staff, emotionally moved by the sub-standard living conditions of IDPfamilies, urged the program to consider providing individual shelters, for families living in barracks.Expatriate staff argued that this might discourage return when the situation on Ambon Island becamepeaceful and that the timing was not appropriate to consider resettlement, which would in turn rein-force divisions between religious groups. Acquiescence, if not complete agreement, was reached by theteam members and the wisdom of this decision reinforced when IDPs in other, now stable, parts ofIndonesia were more reluctant to return home if they had received individual housing. Understandingthe importance of access to materials in the local language, Mercy Corps funded the translation of theDo No Harm book, in cooperation with World Vision in Jakarta, through one of the OTI/DAI-SWIFTgrants. Following the publication of this book, Mercy Corps plans to provide workshops on the Do NoHarm principles to local groups in the coming months.

In a city where Muslims and Christians live completely separate lives, places where people can meetfriends and family or trade and share ideas are at apremium. When Mercy Corps first arrived inMaluku, neutral areas in town were primarilyrestricted to the governor’s office (although most ofthe government departments had to have separateMuslim and Christian offices elsewhere in town)and the area surrounding the alternative universi-ty.14 People would sometimes meet in the no man’slands (border areas), but this was not comfortableand sometimes risky.

24

14 The alternative university was set up several months after the burning of the main university in July 2000. Most ofthe university lecturers were Christian and this small campus located in town provides at least some access toresources for Muslim students.

When individuals met at a workshop for thefirst time there was nearly always hesitation.People would talk through the facilitators or ifinvited only. However after the first two orthree meetings in January and February 2001,the ‘post meeting’ meetings, when peoplewould informally chat and share ideas, wereoften longer than the actual meeting.

Mercy Corps realized almost immediately that itcould play a role in increasing the amount of neu-tral space available in town, particularly for localorganizations that had little opportunity to meeteach other. Mercy Corps staff members believedthat if the space could be provided, the local peoplewould make use of it themselves. When the teammoved into a new office in January 2001, it wasdesigned to be large enough to host a ‘coffee area’where NGOs could just meet socially and shareideas. However, as operations expanded, the idea ofa separate NGO Center was born (see below) andstarted in April 2001.

Mercy Corps defined neutral spaces not only asphysical meeting spaces but also creating theopportunities for people to meet together and shareideas, where they would not usually have the occa-sion to do so. These opportunities have taken theform of coordination meetings, initially establishedby Mercy Corps, training and workshops and alsothe Obralan Santai/Informal Discussions establishedto take place every fortnight at the NGO center, asa discussion forum led by the NGOs themselves.

It is not possible to take full credit for other neutralspaces that have been established during the pasttwo years, at the same time there is a ripple effectto which Mercy Corps has contributed. When theMercy Corps office was established in March 2000,Mercy Corps was the only international NGO tohave a mixed office in one location, as all otheragencies, apart from the UN, operated out of sepa-rate locations. By April 2002, all new internationalagencies had mixed offices and the two organiza-tions already present had each also merged theirstaff into one mixed office. The hotel buildingwhere the Mercy Corps office is currently locatedwas more or less unused at the time when opera-tions started. It is now regularly booked for work-shops, government meetings, joint receptions etc. and the manager has credited Mercy Corps withmaking the area a credible neutral space. A joint market has set up outside the hotel where Muslimsand Christians trade. And perhaps most exciting, NGOs have started to submit joint proposals to

The Malino Peace Agreement

The Malino Peace Agreement was signed inFebruary 2002. Response from the communitywas immense and immediate. People begancrossing borders and there were huge demon-strations supporting the peace process. MercyCorps was asked by local organizations whatit would do to support this process. It wasmade clear that Mercy Corps supports peace ingeneral but will not sign onto any one peaceaccord because this would make a politicalstatement. Staff also explained the belief thatthe socialization and dissemination of theaccord was the responsibility of the governmentand the signatories of the agreement. HoweverMercy Corps did meet with the government tounderstand fully their implementation planand to emphasize that it would be possible totarget recovery and economic empowermentprograms in areas which were peaceful orin need of support. The Mercy Corps teamalso facilitated meetings between delegatesfrom the peace accord and NGOs toexplain the process, so that NGOs couldunderstand the accord and how they couldplay a role in implementing it. With the mostrecent round of violence and questions havearisen as to whether the Malino agreementstill stands, and the approach taken appearsto have been well judged.

Regardless of whether this agreement lasts orothers need to be forged, Mercy Corps willcontinue to support those who are workingtowards peace, while stating that the responsi-bility for a lasting peace rests with the commu-nity and government of Maluku.

25

8.1.3 NGO Community Center

donors to service the needs of both communities, such as occurred with a coalition of six Muslim andChristian organizations that were funded for a clean up the city campaign or a coalition of NGOs set-ting up a mixed office to focus on needs on Seram Island.

Since there has been so much rhetoric on peace and reconciliation in Maluku from the beginning ofthe conflict, many people are cynical and/or do not believe that they should have a direct role in peacebuilding. By bringing people together over common issues such as water management and financialaccountability, Mercy Corps has managed to sidestep the language of conflict and engage both sidesover issues they share in common.

The idea of an NGO community center as a resource for the NGO community was voiced as early asApril 2000. At the time Mercy Corps was searching to relocate the office. Mercy Corps identified theneed to find space that was also large enough to host trainings and be a place where local organizationscould meet each other. Staff also felt that providing the space within Mercy Corps premises would cre-ate a secure environment for NGOs to come together. In February 2001, OTI/DAI-SWIFTapproached Mercy Corps and asked whether there were additional opportunities to enable Muslims andChristians to interact more. Mercy Corps explained that the office was rapidly becoming too small tomeet the needs of the staff and the local organiza-tions, and that the local NGO community wouldbenefit from having its own neutral space. This alsohelped create a separation between Mercy Corps’grant activities and capacity building activities,which were intended to be open to all members ofthe local NGO community regardless of whether ornot they were funded by Mercy Corps.

Security featured as a principle concern when set-ting up the NGO community center. NGOs werecoming to the office when the situation was calm,but if there a security incident occurred the officewould be nearly empty of visitors for the next fiveto ten days. Mercy Corps was concerned that theNGO Center would require an expatriate presenceinitially, to establish its neutrality. Fortunately alarge, three-story house became available across thestreet from the office. This provided the distance toseparate the NGO Center from grant activities butwas close enough to be closely supervised and secu-rity concerns lessened.

The principle purpose of the NGO community center was to provide a neutral space where NGOsfrom both communities could meet to share ideas, come together and provide communal resources forsmaller NGOs to enable them to develop their capacity. At present the center offers a large trainingroom for up to 60 people, five smaller meeting rooms, a library with over 100 books (many available in

26Local Ownership

Some local initiatives that have takenplace at the NGO community center:• Training of women’s credit groups.

• Secretariat for a coalition of six NGOs working on a campaign to clean up the city.

• Training for sanitation workers working on joint sanitation projects funded by UNICEF.

• Training Muslim and Christian midwives and community leaders in basic health principles.

• The center hosts an Obralan Santai each week, informal discussions facilitated by a local NGO representative on topics ranging from how to improve coordination to gender issues. The meeting, held over tea and cake, is attended by an average of 15 NGOs.

• Responding to the Malino Agreement (workshop led by local organizations).

• Regular coordination meetings.

Indonesian), computers, fax, photocopier and telephones. The library is regularly used by NGOs want-ing to expand their knowledge on issues of project management, conflict management as well as sectorspecific activities.

After discussions with local organizations, it was decided to charge a minimum fee for use of services(with higher rates for international organizations wishing to use the center). Costs recouped during thelife of the OTI/DAI-SWIFT grant would be put towards funding future activities of the center.

Use of the center in the initial three months waslimited primarily to Mercy Corps sponsored activi-ties and use of the library, due in part to the poorsecurity situation at the time and possibly due tothe fact that the initiative had come primarily fromMercy Corps rather than being NGO driven.However after this initial period, NGOs began torealize the resource that the center provided, and asa result the center became increasingly busy with anaverage of 150 - 200 visitors a month, rising to over500 per month in February and March 2002. Sofar, 174 NGOs have registered to use the center. The meeting rooms are often so busy thatgroups have to book a couple of weeks inadvance to secure space.

Donors often ask about the sustainability of theNGO Community Center. Mercy Corps receivedfunding from OTI/DAI for the initial 12 months,with the idea that cost recovery from services wouldhelp to fund the center and that a board of interest-ed NGOs would be established to manage the cen-ter. Mercy Corps was concerned about the selectionof NGOs and individuals as it involved a sensitiveand potentially political issue. Experience hasshown that without proper planning, the tendencyexists for communal resources to be annexed by oneor two NGOs or strong individuals. Mercy Corpshas now selected a group of representatives madeup of six NGOs chosen for their vision, experienceand leadership skills that will form an initialSteering Committee. Mercy Corps will work withthem in the planning of activities and decisionmaking on operating the Center. The SteeringCommittee will take responsibility for decidinghow best to select a board of directors that will takeover the management of the Center. The Steeringcommittee has already started to come forward

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Muslim and Christian children from villagessurrounding the mixed town of Waiame cometogether to take part in competitions and havefun together to celebrate Children’s Day inOctober 2001. This activity, organized by alocal NGO, was funded by Mercy Corps.

Talk Leading to Action

Local organizations arranged an informal dis-cussion on human rights. At the discussion itbecame clear that there was no consensus anda lot of confusion about definitions of HumanRights. Although this does not fit with MercyCorps’ direction mission in Maluku, localgroups requested help with organizing train-ing. Once the current violence has subsided,trainers from the Human Rights Commissionfor Women in Jakarta will host a workshop inAmbon. The local NGOs have requested thatfive IDP camp coordinators and two media representatives should also be invited.Following the training, the organizationsinvolved will establish reporting posts on theisland where individuals can come if they have reports of human rights abuses. This willthen be collated and fed back to the HumanRights Commission.

8.1.4 Direct Approaches to Peace Building

with ideas on how to develop the Center, such as hosting live Obralan Santai meetings which would bebroadcast over the radio, persuading local newspapers to devote one column to reporting on humani-tarian activity and establishing a separate newsletter for NGOs.

While hoping that the Center will provide resources to local organizations for some time to come,Mercy Corps also recognizes that it serves a need at this point in time, which is unique to the currentsituation, in terms of providing safe neutral meeting space. The hope exists that as the conflict isresolved, all spaces will become ‘neutral spaces’ and the need for the Center will become a materialresource issue. By then the sustainability of the Center will be driven by the needs of the local NGOcommunity.

Although Mercy Corps interprets its mission as one appropriate for integrated peacebuilding program-ming (into a humanitarian framework) rather than straightforward programming, the organization haspiloted a few direct peace-building initiatives in the province. In deciding which proposals to fund,Mercy Corps looks at how the activities will bring people together, the numbers of people representedfrom the different communities, as well as how these activities will promote peaceful change in the longterm. The security situation also plays a large role in determining whether or not the proposal is appro-priate at any given point in time. Some direct initiatives supported by Mercy Corps include:

• In March 2001, an initiative funded by OTI/DAI-SWIFT brought facilitators from the Conflict Management Group and CDR out to Ambon Island to work with six organizations that had already demonstrated an interest in building links between communities. While all the participants expressed enthusiasm towards the ideas raised by the workshop, there have been few concrete follow-up projects and a final evaluation indicated that support for peace building initiatives might be better sourced from in-country organizations that can provide longer term support and commitment to the groups rather than one time training.

• Mercy Corps also hosted a “Reflecting on Peace Practice (RPP) Feedback Workshop” conducted by the Collaborative for Development Action (CDA, Inc.) in Ambon in January 2002, during which over 20 local organizations and Mercy Corps staff discussed such issues as criteria for effectiveness of peace building activities, conflict mapping, context analysis and strategy development, and how to deal with deliberate disruption of peace processes. The CDA representative stayed on for an additional ten days to help evaluate Mercy Corps activities in relation to Do No Harm principles.

• In February 2002, members from the Center for Security and Peace Studies (CSPS) from Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta, Java, led a series of workshops on Conflict Transformation and Communication Skills for over 40 NGOs. Not only have these workshops received a lot of positive feedback from local organizations, the fact that CSPS is an Indonesian institution also means that it is easier for the local groups to make their own connections with them and use them as a permanent resource.

• In Waiame, Ambon Island’s only remaining mixed village, Mercy Corps funded a local organization in December 2000, to work with Muslims and Christians groups to rebuild and repair approximately 20 houses that had been destroyed during tensions there. It is largely

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8.1.5 Language

acknowledged that this rapid intervention prevented the Christians from leaving the village and finalizing divisions on the island.

• Mercy Corps also supported a week of activities in Waiame, for children from surrounding Muslim and Christian villages in October 2001 to help ‘normalize’ contact and build confidence and trust.

• Mercy Corps has also funded community dialogues between Christian and Muslim villages to discuss reconciliation and the return of IDPs on Seram Island and in Southeast Maluku in 2001.

A small, yet not insignificant contribution to peaceful change has been Mercy Corps’ refusal to engagein the language of conflict. Staff members are not referred to as Muslim and Christian—the differentparts of the town are labeled Alpha and Bravo, refusing to give legitimacy to the ownership of certainlocations by certain religious groups. Mercy Corps talks about one team with Muslims and Christiansin it, not a Muslim team and a Christian team. Projects are not tracked by religion. Mercy Corps hasreinforced the idea within the team, local partners and the media, that ‘suffering knows no religion’.While senior management keeps a rough idea of projects and equity of aid, the objective has been tohelp vulnerable people in need ‘regardless of religion.’ Donors were at first hesitant about not beingable to prove with numbers that funds were helping Muslims and Christians. However they havesince supported this approach and have fully support it. Accusations of disparity of aid used byboth sides in the conflict were initially leveled at Mercy Corps. Mercy Corps refused to engage inthe debate, but provided clear transparent maps on the walls indicating locations of programactivity and accounts of where assistance was provided in the office and through the media, with-out referring to the religious group that was being helped. It would be immediately clear to peo-ple in the area from the maps and locations, who was receiving assistance.

The pitfalls of language are constantly highlighted, particularly with regards to words that are similar inboth languages. For example ‘project’ can be translated as ‘proyek,’ however the team has gradually real-ized that ‘proyek’ carries connotations of large scale government contracts that have little in commonwith community based humanitarian initiatives. By using this word as a direct translation the team wasgiving mixed messages of Mercy Corps’ expectations to the local organizations. Similarly ‘coordination’/‘koordinasi’ carries overtones of control and dominance in Indonesian. When Mercy Corps’ staff identi-fy language challenges, they look for alternative translations and/or provide additional explanations asto the real meaning behind these words at training.

Mercy Corps in Maluku views accountability as a key component of all its programs and understandsthat responsibility towards one’s constituents should be the norm at all levels of society—government,NGOs, formal and informal leaders and between community members. It views its primary accounta-bility towards the beneficiaries and the communities in which it works. Many of the capacity buildingactivities with local organizations are designed to increase their sense of responsibility. However, Mercy

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8.2 Accountability

8.2.2 Accountability to the Community

8.2.1 Modeling Transparency and Accountability

Corps also realizes the importance of modeling positive, accountable ways of working within the organ-ization itself. There have been many complaints from local organizations about the lack of transparencyof international agencies towards local groups and communities. Mercy Corps has tried to work in waysthat demonstrate openness and transparency, which it hopes other local groups will appreciate andreplicate within their own organizations. Below are some of the ways in which Mercy Corps hasattempted to promote accountable methods of working.

Mercy Corps expects a high degree of transparency and accountability from its partners. However, oneof the noteworthy marks of the program is that it has tried to demonstrate the same degree of trans-parency itself. During the financial training, examples of Mercy Corps’ internal finance and complianceforms were shared with partner agencies, to show the way in which Mercy Corps is held accountable toits donors. Local organizations were then free to choose whether or not to make use of these in theirown internal systems. Many of the local organizations have stated that they have adopted the same pro-cedures as Mercy Corps for all their projects.

When an OFDA representative visited the program inSeptember 2001, Mercy Corps arranged for 50 NGOs toattend a meeting led by him to learn more about interna-tional donors. They were able to ask questions such aswhy they could not be funded directly, why the US fundsMaluku and other issues they perceived as important.Explanations by donors themselves on how donor fund-ing works and that they fund Mercy Corps because theythemselves are unable to have a strong operational pres-ence or provide capacity building support, helps to allaysome of the misconceptions and mistrust of why interna-tional donors do not always work directly with localorganizations.

Another frustration voiced by the NGOs was that theydid not get to meet with senior Mercy Corps staff oftenenough to voice complaints and concerns. In response to

this Mercy Corps set up an Open Meeting to be held every few months where local organizations couldraise comments to senior management in a public forum.

The primary responsibility of Mercy Corps is towards the community and to ensure that local partnersare held fully accountable to the beneficiaries. It is because of this that monitoring systems are so rigor-ous and Mercy Corps tries to ensure regular public meetings between beneficiaries, the local NGOs anditself. This level of transparency is not common and helps to improve the credibility of those working

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Meetings like this one with the communityand local organizations are essential toensuring that everyone is fully in supportof project activities and that joint solu-tions are found to any challenges.

with humanitarian missions. When problems arise in the field, Mercy Corps encourages local partnersto share information regarding budgets, frameworks and contracts with the communities so they areaware of the terms of the project.

8.2.3 Sphere Standards

The initial proposal submitted to OFDA in 2000 made prominent reference to the SPHEREMinimum Standards for Disaster Response and indicated that all program activities would be imple-mented in accordance with the SPHERE Project Minimum Standards in Humanitarian Response,including the type and number of items distributed and the participation of the target population.Mercy Corps has consistently used SPHERE standards as a basis for determining which interventionsto fund throughout the province, as well as working with local organizations to provide them withtraining and an understanding of the standards. The priority for training local organizations has beento focus not on the quantitative side of SPHERE, but on the standards of project design, participation,gender awareness and project cycles. Quantitative indicators are useful as a starting point for discussionsand to provide a road map for quality programming, but they have not been used as an end in them-selves.

The SPHERE minimum standards have provided the Mercy Corps team with a solid road map forplanning good needs assessments and good project design including community participation,the value of working in multiple sectors and determining not merely solutions to problems buttheir root causes.

Mercy Corps appointed one local senior staff person as the focal point for disseminating infor-mation about the SPHERE standards and ensuring that there was sufficient training of staff andlocal organizations.15 He attended an initial workshop in Jakarta in April 2001 and a further ‘training oftrainers’ in Australia in February 2002. He has assisted in reviewing the most recent translation of theSPHERE standards into Indonesian. Together with other members of the team, he has organized andfacilitated workshops on needs assessment and project planning as well as in the sectors of water/sanita-tion and shelter. These trainings have been conducted not only on Ambon Island but more recently inSoutheast Maluku and on Seram Island. At the training in Southeast Maluku, the workshop was bro-ken down into three days of classroom training, interspersed with two days of field practical work,where the group of NGOs went to potential project sites and conducted needs assessments in theseareas, then came back to the workshop to evaluate them. As with most of the capacity building work,Mercy Corps has discovered that hands on training is usually far more effective than pure theory.

The concept of international standards for humanitarian response was new, both to the Mercy Corpsteam as well as to local organizations. They have all embraced it as a starting point for discussion. Thestandards have proved a useful referral point in discussions and negotiations on projects, and staff havefound it useful to have an objective set of indicators, that are endorsed internationally, rather thanbeing the subjective opinion of Mercy Corps.

15 This person has since transferred to the program in Central Sulawesi as Grants Coordinator. However, recognizingthe importance to all the Mercy Corps Indonesian programs of his knowledge of training and the SPHERE standards,15% of his time remains allocated to working with other Mercy Corps programs in Indonesia to ensure full understand-ing of the standards and how to apply them.

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One of the major constraints to adopting and promoting the SPHERE Standards has been the delay intranslating the most recent version into Indonesian. The book, being translated by another internation-al organization, was expected in mid-2001 but was not available until April 2002. This meant thatwhile it was possible to discuss the standards and provide training, it was difficult for local organiza-tions to refer to them in their every day work.

8.2.4 NGO Directory

Building links and connections between NGOs from both communities who may have had littleopportunity to meet each other is one of the objectives of any training or meeting. In addition to this,Mercy Corps has published a directory of NGOs registered in the province who wish to share theirdetails with other local organizations, INGOs and possible donors who are interested in making con-nections with local groups. With over 300 groups registered, the directory does not provide detailedinformation but serves as a kind of yellow pages for the province.

Publication of local organizations operating in the province not only improves transparency and coordi-nation but also increases accountability by making contact details available.

8.2.5 Mercy Corps Newsletter

As part of the effort to raise awareness of Mercy Corps activities, anewsletter was started in August 2001. The monthly letter reports onMercy Corps activities, profiles a couple of NGOs each month andoffers tips on themes of interest such as monitoring, proposal writingetc. The newsletter is distributed to the government, community leaders,key local organizations and Mercy Corps partners. Interest has beenhigh from the start. Local organizations from Southeast Maluku havephoned to complain when not enough copies were sent to the sub-office. More recently, local organizations in Ambon have suggested thatMercy Corps should start a separate newsletter for the NGO communi-ty center related activities only, which should be largely undertaken bylocal organizations with administrative support from Mercy Corps.Activities like this help to promote Mercy Corps activities to the broadercommunity as well as increase information exchange between localorganizations and accountability of Mercy Corps to the public.

8.2.6 Media

The quality of journalism in Maluku is weak, with local journalists unable to cross conflict lines andoften providing extremely biased reports and/or reporting verbatim allegations made by members of thecommunity. This sometimes includes allegations made against international organizations. Mercy Corpshas taken the basic approach of not directly engaging with allegations made in the press. It has, howev-er, been proactive in seeking out sympathetic journalists and asking them to profile stories about proj-

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NGO representativesrelax at the NGO centerand read the latest copyof the newsletter.

ect activities when appropriate. One journalist from the local television station has featured MercyCorps every three to four months on the news program.

Local organizations are encouraged to develop independent relations with the press and to mentiondonor and grantor sources when they talk about projects they are implementing.

8.2.7 Accountability to Donors

Mercy Corps Maluku has enjoyed excellent relationships with their USAID donor partners during thetime in Maluku (OFDA and OTI/DAI-SWIFT). This has, in part, been due to a real commitment toaddressing the issues in Maluku by USAID staff but also to a conscious effort by Mercy Corps to treatthem as partners including them in critical decision making and providing regular updates on the situa-

tion and on program development. While this may seemself-evident, one OTI representative recently thankedMercy Corps for its proactive relationship and for not onlyadhering to regular reporting requirements.

OTI/DAI-SWIFT and Mercy Corps have also developed astrong working relationship. While the program was origi-nally envisaged as predominantly a contractor rela-tionship, it became clear that this would not allowMercy Corps the flexibility and independence theyneeded. OTI/DAI-SWIFT is not able to fund long-term programs and prefers to work directly throughlocal partners. An agreement was reached whereMercy Corps refers proposals and NGOs directly toOTI/DAI-SWIFT which are directly suited to their man-

date. Mercy Corps approaches OTI/DAI-SWIFT directly for small scale, value added projects or proj-ects that require a greater degree of oversight towards local partners than OTI/DAI-SWIFT is able toprovide from a distance. Additionally OTI/DAI-SWIFT has found creative ways to overcome fundingrestrictions. At the point when a cap of $25,000 was fixed for U.S. NGOs and both agencies wantedan NGO center in Ambon, OTI/DAI-SWIFT issued two consecutive grants in order to be able toequip and maintain the center adequately.

Regular activities to ensure good communication flow with donors have included:

• Regular situation reports circulated to all donors and other interested parties. While the focus has been largely on Mercy Corps program activities, the report also incorporates a section on the current political and security situation. Donors and those with a political interest value the regular updates which allow them to report back to their headquarters and provide regular reports coming out of an area from which reliable unbiased information is scarce.

• Daily situation reports when the situation in Maluku is tense.• Power Point presentations whenever a senior member of Mercy Corps Maluku comes to Jakarta

(also when in Washington, D.C.). Photos and snapshots of the situation help to bring program activities to life, particularly when it is difficult for donors to access an area.

33Local organizations meet with a donorfrom OTI/DAI at an Obralan Santai todiscuss the latest peace agreement.

• Visits to projects and discussions with Mercy Corps staff, partners and beneficiary communities in Maluku.

As part of its field driven approach, Mercy Corps encourages field based Program Managers to developdirect donor relations. Donors have also commented that this gives them access to direct information inthe field.

In a hierarchical society such as Indonesia, where deci-sions are traditionally made by the most senior person inthe village, organization or business, the concept of partic-ipatory approaches to program design is fairly radical.While most of the local organizations have a relativelygood grasp of the reason behind participation in projects,they are often still ineffectual when it comes to puttingthe theory into practice. This stems as well from a fearthat the process of participation will raise expectationswithin a community. Evaluating the projects that havebeen unsuccessful, lack of participation from communitiesand/or weak relations between the communities, is oftenbehind why a project has not worked or had less impactthan originally intended.

In its guidelines, Mercy Corps states that the cost of the labor for water/sanitation and shelter projectsshould be met by the community as their contribution. This has taken some time to disseminate withincommunities and the smoothness with which it functions is an indicator of the degree of participationby the community.

While acknowledging that a lot more assistance isneeded by local partners in order to be able to workin a fully participatory manner, Mercy Corpsbelieves that one of the best means of learning is bydemonstration. Monitoring and pre-monitoringvisits almost always include community meetingsand ensure that the local organization has talkednot only to the village leaders but also other mem-bers of the community, particularly women, toensure their voices are heard and opinions includedin the development of project activities. During arecent SPHERE workshop in Southeast Malukuthe group of 24 NGOs spent two days in work-shops and then went out into the field to try out

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8.3 Participation

The community contribution to the projectis often the labor needed for construction,such as this gravity fed water system.

Lesson Learned:

When monitoring one project for latrines,Mercy Corps found that while the units hadbeen completed, they were not being used. Itturns out that this was due to the fact that thevillage leader had heard a rumor that theproject had been funded three times the moneythan had actually been spent on the latrinesand was protesting this. It turned out that thiswas not the case but that the NGO had notthought to share the costs of the project withthe community. The problem was discussedwith the community and the problem solved.

the skills that they had just learned. With more such training in the future, Mercy Corps aims toimprove the degree of participation in its projects.

8.3.1 Local Partner Operational Costs

Mercy Corps initially funded the administrative costs for a local organization on the basis of the lengthof time a project would take to implement. Costs were kept to a minimum and were on averagebetween 10-15% of the overall budget. However, monitoring visits showed that projects which are welldone involve considerable more time for needs assessment and inclusion of community ideas and gen-uine involvement of the community. Particularly when groups are funded for projects that are on

islands apart from Ambon, it is important to fundsomeone to stay there throughout the life of theproject. After monitoring several projects that havenot been effectively implemented due to lack oftime, Mercy Corps is reviewing its policy andincreasing the length of time of project cycles toinclude better needs assessments and socializationof projects. It is also looking to try to work morewith local partners who have stronger connectionsand commitment to a particular area.

8.3.2 Government Relations

The government in Maluku is struggling tocope with the challenges of decentralization, whichrequires new ways of relating to the central govern-ment in Jakarta, as well as the added problemscaused by the conflict. Ambon is the seat of theprovince, which comprises five districts orKabupatens. Mercy Corps has always included thegovernment in its attempts to strengthen civil soci-ety in Maluku. In a country such as Indonesiawhere the government is perceived as weak, it doesnot make sense to build only the capacity of localorganizations without working wherever possible tostrengthen the skills of the government as well.

Historically, local and international organizationshave tended to engage as little as possible with the government, frustrated with its lack of capacity andability to provide reliable information. If this situation is to change, however, the government must befully engaged. At a recent meeting with the vice governor, she expressed her frustration that if NGOs(international and local) do not provide reports to government then it is hard for the government to be

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Lesson Learned:

While monitoring a water project Mercy Corpsdiscovered that the system had been vandal-ized by community members and was notbeing used. Closer investigation revealed thata rival NGO had spread rumors that thewater was not safe to drink and further ques-tioning revealed that the people from the vil-lage were not happy with the location of thewater system because it still meant walkinguphill with the water. Nor had the NGO con-sulted with the women in the village. Afterseveral community meetings with Mercy Corpsand the local NGO, an understanding wasreached as to why the water system had beenplaced in that location and the communityagreed to repair it. Subsequent visits showedthat the system was being used.

While the politics of the other local NGO andthe power struggle of the head of the villagecould not have been avoided, all partiesunderstood that involvement of the wholecommunity at an earlier stage would have ledto greater support of the project and possibly toit not being damaged.

accountable and to avoid overlap.16 Mercy Corps has always shared all information with governmentand provided regular reports on project activities at the provincial, local and national level.

Mercy Corps has reinforced the fact that, in the long term, government and local organizations willhave to relate to each other. This relationship does not need to compromise the independence and neu-trality of a local NGO, but at the very least shouldinclude coordination. Mercy Corps requires that anylocal organization submitting a proposal for shelter orwater/sanitation demonstrate that it has coordinatedwith the government at the relevant levels and hasreceived the necessary permissions.

The NGO/government relationship poses anotherchallenge. NGOs have traditionally been in oppositionto the government and assisting them to build con-structive relationships is not always easy. Suspicionexists between local organizations and the government—both feeling that the other is corrupt and not trans-parent with activities. At the point when Mercy Corpsestablished programs in Maluku, local coordinationnetworks had more or less broken down due to theconflict and suspicion between local NGOs. The government was frustrated and, while they claimed towant to listen to local NGOs’ opinions, there was no forum where they could meet. The governmentassumed that Mercy Corps could represent the voice of local organizations due to the fact that they hadthe best overview of local non-government organizations on the island and had already created a direc-tory listing local groups. Whenever outside politicians or donors wanted to meet with local NGOs, thegovernment usually requested that Mercy Corps recommend which local NGOs attend. This was nevera role envisioned by Mercy Corps, who saw it as disempowering and undermining local relations.Gradually staff worked with both government and non-government sectors to establish better relations.The turning point came during the IDP seminar (see inset) when local organization leaders and localgovernment came together to discuss common issues and suggest solutions to the problems facing IDPsin Maluku.

Through this seminar, the government came to realize the key role local organizations play in localcommunities. Since November 2001, it has invited local organizations to coordination meetings andsolicited comments and suggestions from them on the governmental IDP policy. This has directly ledto the government changing its economic empowerment strategy away from distributing things for freeto a commitment to revolve funds through communities. Government departments have stated thatthey will implement their economic empowerment programs through local organizations and haveasked Mercy Corps if they can be included in more training on economic empowerment. The poorsecurity situation during early 2002 has put these plans on hold but Mercy Corps will continue towork with the government and follow up on these plans.

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At the IDP Seminar the governor (top right)meets with local NGO representatives infor-mally over lunch to solicit their opinions.

16 At a meeting in September 2001, Mercy Corps presented the findings of the Shelter Assessment in Jakarta. Afterthe meeting a representative for the Social Department approached Mercy Corps staff and commented that this wasthe first time an international agency had invited them to a presentation like that and how much they appreciated thereport being translated into Indonesian.

The government has also assumed responsibility forgaining a better understanding of the activities ofNGOs in Maluku, requiring in October 2001 thatall local organizations register with the government.The government has also opened an informationcenter where government and local organizationscan cross check data.17 This slow yet importantprocess is part of the bridge-building role MercyCorps has assumed.

Mercy Corps has identified the following keypoints to reinforce with local NGOs regarding gov-ernment relations:

• To have a strong voice in government it is important to have a few people who are trusted to represent the NGO community by other local organizations and government.

• Coordination does not equal control. It is possible to share information with the government and discuss plans without being controlled.

• Local organizations and government are permanent - INGOs are not here to take the place of or substitute for the government.

8.3.3 Relations with OtherInternational Agencies

At the time Mercy Corps set up in Maluku, ACFand MSF-Belgium were the only other internation-al NGOs operating in the area (and had had a pres-ence for approximately one year). The UnitedNations had a small resource center and UNICEFhad a program, largely focused on non-emergencyneeds. ACF’s operations focused on food aid withsome non-food distributions in emergency situa-tions. MSF-B focused on medical aid andwater/sanitation projects. Both organizations direct-ly implemented their programs.

Mercy Corps made clear from the beginning that it had no intention of duplicating operations and hada high degree of commitment to coordination with these agencies. Local organizations were told thatthey would have to coordinate with international agencies before Mercy Corps would fund them. Dueto a lack of formal and informal communication mechanisms, local organizations did not fully under-

A Positive Example of Cooperation Between Sectors:

In July 2001 Mercy Corps and the UNResource Center both funded local NGOs andgovernment representatives to attend a highprofile conference in Jakarta on IDPs inIndonesia and the UN Guiding Principles oninternal displacement.

Upon return to Ambon, Mercy Corps proposedthat the groups involved organize a follow upseminar on “Handling Malukan IDPsthrough an Integrated Approach.” The UNRCwas able to leverage high-level provincial government support while Mercy Corps hadthe contacts with local organizations. Over100 people participated in the two-day semi-nar including the Governor and ViceGovernor and around 40 provincial headsand staff of departments. Around 80 represen-tatives from local organizations, interna-tional NGOs and the press participatedin possibly the largest gathering of localNGOs and government leaders inMaluku since the crisis began.

Following presentations and an overview ofthe problems and responses to dates, workinggroups were formed with presenters, facilitatorsand participants from local NGOs and gov-ernment. After a half-day of discussions, rec-ommendations were presented to the govern-ment. Not only have these recommendationsprovided the basis for discussions and strategicthinking for government and non-governmentleaders, they have also provided an entry pointfor the two groups to meet. The governmentnow regularly invites local NGO representa-tives to attend policy and strategy meetings.

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17 The Governor’s offices were burned in April 2002 so these systems are not operational at the current time.

stand what international organizations were doing in Maluku. Some questioned the lack of coordina-tion and information sharing with local structures.

Mercy Corps realized that it could play a role in helping each side to better understand the other’s aimsand objectives by creating forums where they could talk toeach other and ask direct questions. In March 2001 thefirst coordination forum was set up. After Mercy Corpsfacilitated meetings between representatives from both sidesfor several months, ACF volunteered to be a co facilitatorof the economic empowerment meetings.

As MSF-B planned to reduce the amount of emergencywater trucking they provided, they realized that there wasan opportunity to form links with Mercy Corps and itslocal partners. On several occasions Mercy Corps, MSF-Band a local organization would visit a site and come upwith a solution that would be implemented by the mostappropriate agency.

While different INGOs have different mandates and someare not willing or able to work through local partners, itappears that, in Maluku at least, Mercy Corps has beenable to bring forth the positive advantages for all groups in coordinating and sharing information, whilenot compromising their independence or mission.

Other INGOs set up in Maluku between August 2001 and January 2002, and several of them opted towork through local partners. Mercy Corps saw it had a role to help facilitate connections while not pro-viding partner recommendations, believing that it is the responsibility of each individual organizationto select partners. A couple of the organizations used space in the NGO center from which to operateuntil they could identify suitable neutral space of their own.

8.3.4 Coordination Coordination is inevitably a challenge in a conflict-affected province consisting of many islands, withcommunication challenges and over a hundred local organizations operating, often in only one or twolocations. Therefore, coordination has to take place on multiple levels: project, village, district, withinthe sector, across agencies and with the government. It is extremely time consuming, although theefforts do pay off.

The issue of coordination is also highly sensitive in the Indonesian context. ‘Koordinasi’ in Indonesianhas connotations of control. Government led coordination meetings are traditionally an opportunityfor the government to lay out their plans and tell other stakeholders what they should be doing.Furthermore, a coordination network of NGOs had existed in Maluku and at one time received themajority of attention from foreign donors. This had however broken down as the conflict developedand it became harder for Muslims and Christians to meet together.

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MSF, Mercy Corps and a local partnerconduct a field trip to assess how best tosolve water shortages in the village.Good coordination helps everyone bemore effective.

9. Local Partners

As mentioned above, Mercy Corps did not want to take on a role representing the local NGO commu-nity to government and outside parties and felt extremely uncomfortable at times when it was request-ed to recommend NGOs to attend meetings. It was felt that this was disempowering local organiza-tions and their potential to coordinate and represent themselves instead of building their capacity.However, with the ever-increasing number of organizations and the potential for overlap, the need formeetings to share information became more pressing. Mercy Corps also felt this was an importantopportunity to establish more contact between existing international groups and local organizations.

Initially Mercy Corps focused on establishing Food Security/Economic Empowerment coordinationmeetings, given the large number of local and international organizations working on these and relatedissues and the fact that it was identified by all as a priority sector. ACF together with a local organiza-tion took responsibility for facilitation. Given that ACF was not experienced in working with localorganizations, Mercy Corps provided logistical support and back up. As local organizations took owner-ship of the meetings, they became more involved in setting the agenda and organizing the logistics.Currently, responsibility for the meetings has been taken over by two local organizations, one Muslim,and one Christian and is regularly attended by over 25 local groups.

Mercy Corps and a local organization jointly chair the water/sanitation coordination meeting and ashelter coordination meeting also takes place regularly. Mercy Corps envisions that, as the local organi-zations take over management of the NGO Community Center, more coordination forums will beestablished with representatives sitting on an umbrella body. While this process takes time, manylocal organizations have started to talk about the need for such a forum with the NGO Center asthe focal point.

Making a decision to work with local partners is not newwithin Mercy Corps or the humanitarian world. MercyCorps’ initial assessments to the region focused on identi-fying whether or not there was sufficient local capacity towork through local partners. At the time Mercy Corpsestablished a presence there were approximately 60 organi-zations registered in Maluku.

Mercy Corps defines the organizations it works with aspartners because the relationship is one of mutual interde-pendence than of a grantor/grantee. While many of therelationships are built around a grant, staff almost alwaysdevote considerable time to working with the local NGOto develop the project and build their skills to help thembecome more accountable and transparent and obtain bet-ter management skills. Mercy Corps also works with sever-al partners it does not fund directly who either attendtraining or contribute regularly to the strategic develop-ment or the Mercy Corps programs in Maluku. It is also a word that clearly distinguishes the type of

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Mercy Corps staff monitors a water projectfunded to a group of students doing theirvoluntary work in the community. Theyapproached Mercy Corps requesting fundsto add value to their community develop-ment work by building a water system forIDPs. This project won a national awardfrom government.

relationship Mercy Corps is aiming for from the more usual contractor relationship expected by gov-ernment when it works through local NGOs.

Working through local partners can take many forms: international organizations often select a smallnumber of partners and provide core funding and training for them while not engaging with the otherlocal organizations in the region. While this can be effective for a long distance donor or for an NGOwith a distinct mandate, Mercy Corps made the decision to accept open applications and to make deci-sions to fund based on the merit of the organiza-tion combined with the quality of the proposal. Bynot offering core funding, local organizations werealso motivated to look at other means of securingfunding to ensure sustainability.

Mercy Corps uses broad criteria to determinewhether a local organization is eligible to receivegrants and funds a variety of groups with differentstructures, legal definitions, missions, and method-ologies. It requires that an organization be legallyregistered in a manner appropriate to its status (asdetermined by Indonesian law) and have a clearorganizational structure and financial managementsystem. Although the majority of the organizations are ‘Yayasan’ or ‘Lembaga’ which correspondapproximately to the Western definition of NGO, religious groups, student community groups andsmaller community based organizations have also been funded.

One major challenge was that more experienced organizations did not welcome a close relationshipwith accountability expected from both partners. They were accustomed to absentee donors or govern-ment contracts that did not require a high degree of accountability for finances and that did not oftenmonitor their activities. Another challenge was how to identify a means to assess the capacity of newerlocal organizations, which might or might not have the ability to implement projects.

Another difficulty was negotiating the sensitivities of religious differences. The perception exists inMaluku that Western aid is targeted predominantly towards Christians. Furthermore, in the mostrecent fighting, those displaced were predominantly Christian. By promoting transparency, MercyCorps made clear that it would fund any organization whose aim was to relieve humanitarian sufferingregardless of religious affiliation. No organization was required to work with both religions; however, itwas made clear that the Mercy Corps office was mixed and that respect and tolerance were expectedfrom all partners.

A constant tension within the program has been the need to balance assisting the greatest number ofvulnerable people while not compromising the quality of the program through funding local organiza-tions with insufficient capacity.

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After fighting broke out on Seram Island inDecember 2000, Mercy Corps funded anNGO to distribute non-food items to 2,000people within three days of learning of the sit-uation. The distribution took place two weekslater. Another INGO responding to the samecrisis did not arrive for an assessment untilJanuary. This example demonstrates that localgroups with good local knowledge are oftenbest placed to respond rapidly to relativelysmall-scale emergency needs.

9.1 Start Small

9.2 Projects Locally Driven

9.3 Response Time

9.4 Projects in Remote Areas

Due to the challenges of assessing capacity of organizations in an emergency environment, MercyCorps initially funded a large number of organizations for relatively small grants. By monitoring these projects, it became possible to identify NGOs with capacity to take on larger projects and toeither not fund weaker organizations or to target them with more capacity building efforts before funding more projects.

Initially all proposals submitted were for projects and needs identified by local organizations. As MercyCorps internal capacity grew, team members undertook independent needs assessments throughout theprovince and made recommendations to NGOs based on identified needs (see shelter assessment6.1.3.). However, the fact that local organizations are encouraged to identify needs themselves differsfrom the approach taken by other INGOs in emergency locations, where local organizations are oftenused as implementing partners to carry out the programs of the international organization. If the proj-ects are not based on needs identified by the local organization itself, it is possible that ownership of theprocess will be lessened.

One of the initial concerns raised by donors was that local groups would not be able to respondrapidly to an emergency situation. However, experience demonstrated that in an area as spreadout as Maluku, local organizations often receive information more rapidly through their informalnetworks than through official channels. For smaller quantities of assistance (up to 1,000 fami-lies), local organizations, which are smaller and less cumbersome, are often better placed torespond quickly than international organizations that have more cumbersome mechanisms. Similarly,local organizations can procure commodities quickly on the local market and are not dependent onlarge deliveries from other parts of Indonesia in the way that most INGOs are.

Up until March 2001, most of Mercy Corps’ aid was focused on Ambon Island, partly due to the logisti-cal challenges of distributing to widely dispersed populations across the islands. As Mercy Corps beganto work on other islands, a new challenge emerged. Most local organizations had headquarters in Ambontown and did not have strong community links with areas outside Ambon Island. Connections withmore remote areas usually depended on family members still there. Mercy Corps has funded manyorganizations to work outside of their ‘home’ location with mixed results. Some groups have done agood job of working with the local communities, while others have viewed the project more as a contractand have not returned to follow up or have not sufficiently consulted with the communities beforeimplementing projects. There are lessons to be learned from this, including providing longer operationalfunding to ensure that needs assessments and follow up are sufficiently in-depth to provide quality proj-ects. By setting up offices in Tual (Southeast Maluku) in June 2001 and Masohi (Seram Island) in March2002, Mercy Corps is attempting to ensure that wherever possible genuine local groups are funded andthat capacity building support is provided as close to the level of need as possible.

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9.5 Uneven Capacity of Local OrganizationsEarly on, one of the challenges for the program was identifying suitable local partners. Initial assess-ments determined that the larger, more experienced NGOs were more likely to have acquired badhabits, such as inappropriate use of funds or inaccurate reporting, than the newer NGOs. This had tobe weighed against the fact that many of the older NGOs had demonstrable capacity to implementprojects. The application process was, therefore, made open to all registered local organizations andfunding approvals were made based on the quality of the proposal and an evaluation of the potential of the organization to implement the project efficiently and accountably. Two problems soon became apparent:

1. Some of the more experienced NGOs felt threatened by the number of new NGOs emerging; 2. The number of NGOs registered with Mercy Corps in Maluku grew from 60 to over 300 within

a one-year period, the majority of them on Ambon Island.

To address the first problem, Mercy Corps took a more proactive approach to engage some of the moreexperienced NGOs in program activities, capitalizing on their experience regardless of whether theywere funded by Mercy Corps or not. Activities included: asking them to host discussions and coordina-tion meetings, involving them in the steering committee for the NGO Community Center, invitingthem to come and discuss the direction of humanitarian aid in Maluku, work with Mercy Corps man-agers and to run additional capacity building workshops for less experienced groups. There inevitablyremained NGOs that were not happy with Mercy Corps, partly due to the fact that Mercy Corps hadhigh demands for accountability. In addition, there were experienced local NGOs who felt they had aright to be funded, but did not meet Mercy Corps’ criteria for funding. However, making the effort toinclude more experienced NGOs in the program has noticeably decreased feelings of antagonismtowards Mercy Corps.

The second problem was how to engage with the ever-increasing numbers of registered organizations.While there were approximately 10-15 groups before the conflict started, many of them focusing onenvironmental issues, by the time Mercy Corps established a presence there were over 60 NGOs regis-tered. Two years later over 350 groups across the archipelago had registered with Mercy Corps,although many of them were not humanitarian groups, but instead had more monetary interests atheart. The increase in NGOs has been a mixed blessing. On the one hand, many of the groups are newand dynamic. At the same time, it became increasingly difficult to distinguish the genuine from thosewith ulterior motives. Initially, Mercy Corps was supportive of the new groups if they could demon-strate the capacity to implement a given project. However Mercy Corps has now reached a point whereit wants to consolidate its partners and focus on organizations with demonstrated capacity and experi-ence. The mushrooming is perhaps inevitable in a climate where there is large-scale donor interest in anarea. The challenge is to support groups that have the prospect of sustainability and assist them indeveloping post-conflict strategies.

Another important criteria for determining longer term relationships is that organizations should notbe dependent on the strength of one individual but rather comprise a group of people committed tochanging and improving the situation. Committed individuals, however strong their project perform-ance, are unlikely to be able to make lasting changes to communities and do not contribute to thestrengthening of civil society in the same way as those also working within strong organizations.

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Mercy Corps is now in the process of identifying partners with a demonstrated capacity to not onlyimplement effective projects but also to work well with local communities promoting transparency, par-ticipation and accountability. To date, out of 177 partners, 66 have been funded for multiple projectsand Mercy Corps intends to increase this ratio in the future.

As already mentioned, training and workshops form an important component of capacity buildingactivities. Many of these are facilitated by members of the Mercy Corps team from Maluku or fromJakarta. These have included a broad range of topics including: Financial Management, ProjectPlanning (for different sectors), SPHERE Minimum Standards and Gender Workshops. When MercyCorps identifies strong Indonesian groups or individuals it also provides awards for them to come andprovide training in Maluku. This has included a workshop on needs assessment, facilitated by a repre-sentative from OFDA and several workshops on understanding conflict led by representatives from theCenter for Security and Peace Studies in Yogyakarta.

On average, at least two workshops are held in Ambon each month. Beginning in 2002, Mercy Corpshas arranged for workshops to also take place in Southeast Maluku and on Seram, to allow local organi-zations based there to access these resources. The workshops not only provide the opportunity for skillstransfer but also allow local organizations to share information, ideas and lessons learned. Thesesessions are attended by 20 to 100 NGO representatives, depending on the topic. Wherever pos-sible government representatives from appropriate departments are also invited.

Inevitably, Mercy Corps is unable to work with all local organizations or to fund all proposals submit-ted. While rejection of proposals is something which local NGOs often take hard and personally,Mercy Corps has tried to establish mechanisms for providing feedback and transparency so that there isa clear understanding of why a project has been accepted or rejected.

• A rejection is communicated through a written letter signed by the program manager, documenting the reasons for the rejection and suggestions for revisions or alternative submissions if appropriate.

• The NGO is invited to make an appointment to come and talk to a senior team member if they are unsatisfied with the explanation given.

• Leaflets are available to local organizations explaining the process and whom they should go to if they are concerned about fair treatment.

• In the event an organization feels that there has been discrimination by the office, all local partners are able to complain directly to the Jakarta office.

Although the success or failure of a project is context specific and depends on a number of factors, staffin the Maluku program have identified the following positive and negative trends in projects which aresuccessful or do not meet the agreed upon objectives.

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9.6 Training and Workshops

9.7 Mechanisms for Feedback

9.8 Project Successes and Weaknesses

10. Processing Grants

Successes:

• Participation — projects which have good participation between communities, beneficiaries and the implementing partner, are more likely to succeed.

• Partnership — in which all stakeholders have a commitment to improving the lives of the targeted beneficiaries and where a level of trust is established between Mercy Corp and the partner.

• Clear ground rules — enough time has been put into the process of developing the framework so that each party has a clear understanding of his/her responsibilities.

• Transparency — when local partners take time to explain to the community resource flow and time lines.

• Clear objectives — goals and objectives which are measurable • Existing relationships — where members of the local organization come from the local community

or have previous links and relationships with the communities

Weaknesses:

• Projects that are developed too quickly without the agreement of all the stakeholders. • Projects for which the originating drive comes from Mercy Corps without ownership by the local

partner so that the relationship becomes primarily contractor/contractee and loses its humanitarian focus.

• An infrastructure project which is not accompanied by enough ‘socialization’ and accompanying education (e.g. latrines).

• When NGOs are not sufficiently aware of Do No Harm principles to be able to analyze potential negative project impacts of project interventions.

• Proposals that take too long to process are sometimes no longer needed by the time that they are funded.

• Lack of coordination causes confusion in the community and among agencies.• When local NGOs approach aid from the perspective of charity and free handouts rather than

looking to identify the root causes and then determine solutions.

As the operations in Maluku expanded, it was decided that a more comprehensive, transparent andeffective system for processing proposals needed to be set in place. For the first round of grants, theprocess had been taken directly from the one used by the grants program in Jakarta. However the needto be able to rapidly respond, plus the religious sensitivities in Maluku, led to a new system being putin place.

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10.1 How the Process Works

10.2 Guidelines

1. Proposal submission: proposals should follow guidelines published in the Request for Applications that is reviewed and reissued every few months in order to incorporate lessons learned and clarify areas that have caused misunderstandings. Proposals are allocated a code and a key person (whose responsibility it is to follow the proposal through until the end when the project has been funded, implemented, monitored and closed), a second person (to provide back up support) and a supervisor, (one of the senior members of the national team). In order to ensure transparency, at least one Muslim and one Christian must be on the review committee. In addition, one expatriate technical advisor takes responsibility for technical consultations.

2. Proposal review: the three people mentioned above review the proposal and a decision made whether to recommend it or reject it. If it is rejected then a letter is sent to the NGO signed by the Program Manager. If it is recommended for pre-monitoring then a team of at least two staff visits the site and the NGO office to assess the suitability of the project, the capacity of the organization and the involvement of the community. A proposal assessment form is completed.

3. Proposal development: if a recommendation is made to fund the proposal, the team draws up a framework and budget. The framework outlines the goals, aims, objectives and indicators for the project. The budget indicates costs to be met by Mercy Corps together with contributions from the local NGO and the community. Both the framework and the budget are often substantially different from the original proposal and clearly state the objectives to which all stakeholders agree and are used as the basis for monitoring and evaluating the grant activities. While stating clearly in the guidelines that budgets are intended to reflect the real costs of the project, the nature of Indonesian society is in bargaining and there is inevitably some negotiation involved because initial prices are inflated. The framework and budget are approved by the NGO, the key person, supervisor, expatriate specialist and expatriate program manager before being sent to Jakarta for review by the finance team and approval by the country director.

4. Approval: upon approval, a grant agreement is drawn up together with a Funds Request Form that releases funds from Jakarta. The local organization and Mercy Corps sign this.

5. Implementation: a first installment is paid which is usually between 40 - 60 % of the total award. Before subsequent tranches are paid, the project will be monitored and a financial report must be submitted and reviewed. For longer projects, such as micro-credit or shelter for returns, monthly narrative and financial reports from the NGO are required.

6. Closure: before a project can be closed a final monitoring trip is conducted and the local organization must submit a final financial and narrative report.

The first Request for Applications, issued in April 2000, consisted of a set of relatively broad guidelinesand requested proposals, based on the Jakarta grants program guidelines for economic empowerment. It

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became rapidly apparent that a combination of lack of experience and insufficient training in the pastled to poor quality proposals being submitted which made plentiful use of buzz words but showed littleunderstanding of project design. In order to focus the NGOs on concrete measurable project activitiesthat addressed a specified need, an application form was designed for subsequent emergency proposals.In addition the program discovered that the more specific the application guidelines, the better qualitythe proposal. The guidelines for each sector are refined and further developed with each RFA and useSPHERE minimum standards as a baseline for measuring the suitability of proposals.

Each RFA is also accompanied by a workshop on the guidelines, providing an opportunity to emphasize changes and answer questions. This appears to be particularly important in areas where less emphasis is placed on the written word than in Western cultures. The culture in Indonesia alsomeans that people are used to finding a way round systems and regulations and do not expect MercyCorps to hold people to the guidelines. The workshops reinforce Mercy Corps’ commitment to follow-ing the guidelines.

The speed with which a proposal is processed depends on many factors, including the quality of theproposal and budget, previous experience of the NGO and the willingness of both the organization andMercy Corps to negotiate and find creative solutions when obstacles are encountered. In the case of anurgent need for intervention there is the additional challenge of balancing response time against theneed to ensure quality projects and reporting.

Mercy Corps aims to process proposals within six to eight weeks, unless there is an emergency, in whichcase Mercy Corps can (and has on several occasions) issued grants and funding within 48 hours.However due to the large number of proposals received, processing is often delayed by several monthsfor non-emergency projects. Furthermore, process-ing slows down whenever there is a deterioration inthe security situation. Mercy Corps is in the processof trying to better streamline the process and pro-vide more training on time management for thestaff. Delays in processing lead to suspicion fromthe local NGOs. On several occasions NGOs com-mented that Mercy Corps should not be undertak-ing capacity building activities if they could notprocess proposals in a timely fashion. With theincrease in capacity and experience of the MercyCorps team, the timing has improved but stillneeds constant monitoring by the team. A lessonlearned has been to ensure that NGOs are keptinformed of the status of their proposal and thatthey participate in the revision process in order toavoid discontent.

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10.3 Time Frames for Projects

Working Together with Local Partners

The first report received from one local organi-zation for micro credit in early 2001 wascompletely inappropriate with inaccuratereceipts and no understanding of financialtracking. Given that the project itself wasgood, Mercy Corps worked with the NGO toimprove its systems and understand howhumanitarian funds work. In subsequentwater/sanitation and NFI projects with theorganization, not only has the quality ofreporting improved immeasurably but alsoafter each project the NGO has returned sub-stantial amount of the total grant, under-standing that this will be ‘recycled’ back intothe pool of funds.

10.5 Protection of Staff Members

10.6 Misuse of Funds

Given the suspicions of INGOs among the local communities and the allegations that they were onlythere to assist one religious side, the need for transparency is critical. To prevent bias and help maintainconsistency across projects, two program assistants are assigned to each proposal, one from each community to ensure transparency within the team and to forge stronger links between each teammember. Whenever possible monitoring and assessments are also conducted by a mixed team ofMuslim and Christian staff (this is only possible outside of Ambon Island at present). All projects aredocumented with digital photos that track their progress and can be viewed by team members or intrainings and workshops.

Beginning in July 2001, Mercy Corps plotted all funded proposals on a series of large maps in thereception area of the office. Projects were identified by sector not by the religion of the beneficiaries.However anyone from Maluku was easily able to identify the Muslim and Christian geographical areasof the islands and so could see how assistance was targeted across the province. A recent assessment ofproposals funded indicates that aid has been more or less targeted in proportion to the needs in anyparticular geographical area in line with population density.

Unfortunately not all local organizations are reputable and team members revealed that they were oftenput under pressure to favor certain NGOs and projects, sometimes by what the team called‘sweet threats’—bribes and also by less pleasant means. However no staff member was willing todirectly accuse an NGO. The problem was tackled initially by holding meetings with all staff todiscuss the issue and to brainstorm ways in which Mercy Corps could strengthen its systems toprovide support and protection to team members that interact with local organizations on a dailybasis. Key recommendations were as follows:

• Staff should not be put in a position where they become too close with a particular NGO. Rotate key people for different proposals coming from the same local partner.

• All projects and proposals are monitored by at least two people in the team to reduce pressure from local organizations on any one person.

• Ultimate responsibility for the decision to reject or accept a proposal comes from the program manager. Making sure that a large number of people are part of the process of reviewing proposals helps to dissipate one person ‘taking the heat’ with the NGO.

• It is more than acceptable to involve international staff if program assistants feel they need an outside party to help mediate and create some distance. • Make clear the process to the NGOs and how it works and the steps that will be taken in the event of threats being made.

In a country that is rated third in the world indexes of corruption it is to be expected that not allgroups will make honest use of the funds that have been allocated. While Mercy Corps has experiencedonly one case of the leader of the NGO disappearing with all of the money, there are other commonlypracticed tricks including false receipts which make the financial records equal the exact total of the

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10.4 Transparency

budget, not purchasing the exact quantities orquality of materials declared and/or not declar-ing discounts given by the stores.

Years of corruption pervading all levels of society in Indonesia have legitimized inappropriate behaviors in the eyes of manyIndonesians and blurred distinctions betweenshrewd accounting and misuse of funds. WhenNGOs realize what Mercy Corps means byproper accounting, they are often grateful andmore than willing to comply as they realize itincreases their professional standards. At onenotable finance training led by members of thefinance team from Jakarta in February 2001members of several NGOs stood up after anexplanation about the need for real receiptsand confessed that they had not been doingthis because it was not expected from govern-ment and other donors and asked how theycould remedy the situation.

While realizing that this is swimming againstthe tide, Mercy Corps Maluku has taken atough approach to financial compliance believing that it is imperative for the communities that NGOsare held fully accountable for the funds that they receive.

One important point Mercy Corps emphasizes to local organizations is that funds not used from aproject do not go into someone’s pocket but are part of the pool of funds for providing more assistanceto the vulnerable. NGOs are encouraged to submit suggestions of extensions to projects and use of thefunds so that they can clearly see what happens to the money.

A document explaining what constitutes mismanagement is explained to each NGO when signing eachgrant so that there is no opportunity for an organization to claim ignorance.

Good practices for reducing misuse of funds include:

• Disbursement of funds in tranches: most of the time, project funds are issued in tranches. After an initial payment, no subsequent tranches are made until the project has been monitored in the field and a financial report reviewed.

• Dedicated compliance staff: a full time compliance officer (a second one was put in place in early 2002 to help deal with the massive work load created by 300 grants, old and current and also to ensure equal access to shops and NGO offices on both the Muslim and Christian side) has respon-sibility for providing training to the NGOs in proper accounting techniques, checking receipts and

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Monitoring Program Quality and Accountability

One local organization was funded to build parti-tions in 2 large warehouses housing over 1,500 peo-ple. Monitoring during the initial phase of the proj-ect revealed good workmanship and communityinvolvement and a strong impact with familiesreporting improved hygiene, quality of life andreduced tensions in the camp. However a review ofthe financial report indicated that there was a dis-crepancy between the amount of materials actuallyused and those allegedly purchased. After several tripsto the camp and no consensus with the NGO, MercyCorps hired an independent auditor to help settle thematter, whose report concurred with Mercy Corps.The head of the NGO subsequently discovered thatthe Project Manager had been stealing materials. Heformally apologized to Mercy Corps, returned someof the money and dismissed the staff member. Bothsides agreed that it would not be possible to fundfuture projects unless the NGO could improve itsmonitoring systems.

reports and ensuring that investigations are started against any NGO suspected of misusing funds. They also liaise with the program assistants, asking them while on monitoring trips to verify that the quality of materials purchased matches with the budget line item. The compliance officers are currently in the process of recommending to Program Assistants that once a project is signed, they immediately discuss a time line for monitoring progress. Not only will this support rapid implementation, it will also identify problems at an earlier stage, rather than waiting for reports to be submitted.

• Assiduously following up on inaccurate reports or missing funds: when it is clear that funds have been mismanaged, or projects not implemented as agreed, Mercy Corps has followed the outlined procedures, in many cases ensuring that funds were returned. In the more problematic cases, missing funds have been reported to the police. Although it is unlikely that the police have the capacity to take direct action, this response is taken seriously by local organizations. The word also spreads rapidly that Mercy Corps takes the management of funds extremely seriously which probably also reduces the temptation to embezzle funds.

• Conducting price surveys: Mercy Corps conducts its own price surveys and budget lines are kept as lean as possible to reduce the temptation to inflate prices. This has caused problems of its own when prices suddenly increase and there is no flexibility in the budget to cover these costs. In this case grant amendments are issued. Although this procedure can be time consuming, experience has taught the team that even the most proven NGOs need to be closely monitored and supported to prevent the temptation to misrepresent costs.

While it might seem that the appropriate solution would be to refuse to work with anyone whocould not meet Mercy Corps’ clearly stated financial management procedures, this would possi-bly have disqualified all organizations from at the outset. Through experience Mercy Corps hascome to believe that it is better to work with organizations to increase their understanding of whytransparency is important. Mercy Corps also encourages organizations to report on problems encoun-tered in the field with budgets and implementation, rather than report only what a donor wishes tohear. It is an uphill struggle to explain that without understanding the difficulties NGOs are facing,Mercy Corps is unable to adapt its guidelines and programs towards supporting solutions.

A major challenge for local and expatriate staff is that there is no single language that everyone is fluentin. Some local staff have basic to no English skills when they join the team. Similarly, while expatriatestaff commit to learn Indonesian, this too takes time. Mercy Corps designed a series of forms forreviewing proposals and monitoring the projects to reduce the amount of free style writing required.

To provide support to the staff, Mercy Corps organized English and Computer classes, available to allbeginner and intermediate levels. Several of the staff commented on how this made them feel valued asprofessionals. From January 2001, all expatriate staff have been sent to an initial, one-week, intensivelanguage training course and are encouraged and supported to find a local language teacher when theyget to the area. While understanding that in emergency situations the need for language skills has to be

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10.7 Language Challenges

11. Building a Team11.1 Background

balanced against pressure to perform programmatically, the quality of work undoubtedly improveswhen international staff has greater linguistic skills, particularly in areas where there are few English speakers.

Without a doubt one of the principle contributing fac-tors to the success of the program in Maluku has beenthe incredibly strong team with a shared commitmentto meeting the humanitarian and longer term needs ofthe community there. When a visitor enters the officetoday, it seems completely natural that there should bea mixed team of Muslims and Christians. While it istrue that a commitment to a mixed office existed fromthe outset, this has not been an automatic or even easydecision at all times. In every day life, Muslims andChristians have little or no opportunity to engage,apart from at a few markets and government offices. InSeptember - November 2000, Mercy Corps had to setup a small alternative office for the Muslim staff towork in when they did not feel safe coming to theoffice in the governor’s building. Creating a new neu-tral space was a fairly radical decision at the time. The strategy was to set up a joint office that could

separate to two different locations, one on each side of thetown, when the situation became too unstable. This was rel-atively easy with a staff size of four and 30 active project filesto remove. As Mercy Corps grew in early 2001 it became amore cumbersome procedure to put into place. Nonethelessthere were two occasions in early 2001 when the office hadto divide, once because of tensions on the Muslim and onceon the Christian side. Similarly in April and May 2002 theteam had to divide, allocating project files and then transfer-ring them between program assistants in safe areas at points

when the situation was sufficiently calm. As the local team members have developed and grown instrength they have vocalized clearly that whenever possible they want to be able to meet together, how-ever briefly on a daily basis and that they prefer to work from home rather than in separate offices.They voice concern over the fact that when they are working together it is easy to see the transparencyof the team, but as soon as they are segregated and dependent only on rumors and misinformation tounderstand what is going on suspicions start to arise.

50Almost the whole team!! May 2002. The stafftakes pride in the fact that they are able towork and play together in spite of a situationthat tries to keep them separate.

“One of the best parts of traveling toother islands in a mixed team is thatwe have down time when we cansocialize with people we only normal-ly meet at work.We often sit up untilthree in the morning discussing togeth-er and putting the world to rights.”

11.2 Staff DevelopmentDuring their evaluations many members of the team explained how difficult they found the initialmonths with Mercy Corps. Not only did they have to follow a vertical learning curve in terms ofknowledge of systems and aims of Mercy Corps, they were also expected to take on a level of responsi-bility for their work not usual in most organizational structures in Indonesia. And perhaps most diffi-cult of all they had to face up to their own fears and prejudices about the “other side.” Approximately

half of Mercy Corps’ staff have lost their homes and been dis-placed themselves during the course of the conflict. Several ofthem were living in IDP camps until they got jobs and manyof them support many other family members with theirsalaries. This leads to an emotional involvement in the plightof the conflict-affected populations and a difficult process oflearning to emotionally disengage when doing assessments.The SPHERE Minimum Standards have proved invaluable in

helping to develop objective ways of assessing the situation. A further difficulty is facing the questionsand challenges of their own community when they go home at night; ‘Why are you working with theother side?’ ‘What are you telling them?’ ‘Will you get Mercy Corps to fund me/my organization?’

When they are asked what it is that helped them through the initial stages of working with MercyCorps, most employees refer to the strong mentorship provided by more senior members of the team.These are often people of the same religion and by seeing and talking with them it helps them to work

through some of their personal issues. One of the mostrewarding feelings is to see staff ‘catch on’ after one ortwo months to the vision and aim of what MercyCorps is trying to do.

A final key point has been the participatory approachand the emphasis on making all staff understand how their

role is critical to the success of the program and to help them understand how they are contributing tothe overall vision of the agency. This means including all staff, not just program team members, in ini-tial brainstorming meetings over strategy, and working to bridge the typical divide between programand finance/admin by having staff with both programmatic and administrative responsibility such asthe compliance team. It also means that the program has confidence in each team member’s ability torepresent the program to outsiders.

Opportunities for professional staff development are often limited in emergency programs.Management has endeavored to provide such opportunities for development to team members. Themajority of members from the senior team have traveled to Jakarta, either to work with the team thereand shadow other programs or to attend workshops. National staff are encouraged to attend traininghosted for local partners and additional computer and English classes have been provided after work.An Indonesia wide policy allows each team member working for more than a year to receive anallowance towards additional professional development. It is not possible to guarantee long-term jobsecurity for the team given the continually changing context. However, investing in professional devel-opment helps build their skills for the future, at the same time improving current performance andbuilding loyalty to the organization, as they feel valued as individuals.

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“I thought I would always hate theother side because of what they didto my community. But in MercyCorps there are no Muslims andChristians—just people.”

“I feel good being able to supportnew staff in the same way that Iwas helped when I arrived to workthrough my doubts and concerns.”

11.3 Trust

11.4 Composition of Staff

11.5 Taking Account of Individual Potential

One critical factor has been the development of a team that knows the limitations of the boundariesimposed by those promoting the conflict, but possesses the trust to know that they can rely on eachother when the situation is bad. Some of the team building approaches are relatively simple and may beobvious, but they carry infinitely more weight in a context where staff members are unable to mixsocially, such as to celebrate a birthday, spend social afternoons at the NGO center, and have staff din-ners when visitors come to town with all staff not just senior management. Another has been completetransparency and creating opportunities for discussion when problems come up, whenever possible withmixed groups of people. A third has been to ensure that the selection and recruitment processes areopen but take into consideration the recommendations (and warnings) of all staff.

At the start of the program it was necessary, for security reasons as well as local perceptions of MercyCorps, to ensure a balance of Muslim and Christian staff—equitable if not completely equal; so oneMuslim and one Christian senior program staff member were hired and Mercy Corps continued to aimto maintain equity in hiring. This was not always easy given that generally Christians have had betteraccess to Western education opportunities and are often better English speakers. However as the teambecame stronger, the need for the equal numbers became less critical and the role and experience ofeach individual became more important to the team as a whole. Thus when the most senior Muslimstaff member relocated to open an office in Southeast Maluku it was not deemed necessary to appoint asecond Christian staff, but rather meant reorganizing people into positions of responsibility they wereready for. This is an issue of working with the team that exists and gradually developing trust so thatpeople stop attaching religious labels to each other.

The key role in developing the team, played by the two national staff initially hired, cannot be overesti-mated. Senior staff members are viewed also as the parents of the organization, their opinion is highlyregarded and they wield a strong influence over other team members. Mercy Corps was extremely for-tunate to hire two national staff for the first six months who have gone on to make a professional com-mitment to Mercy Corps and to its vision and to take on greater responsibility for management.

Kim Maynard from the Cuny Center talked about the Mercy Corps program as ‘personality driven’during her visit to assess peace building in short term programming, meaning that the program places astrong emphasis upon individuals within the team to take the program forward. While acknowledgingthe need for systems, the belief exists that individual staff members are what gives the program itshuman touch and ensures that it stays relevant and responsive to the current situation. A good exampleof this is in the hiring of local staff. In the context of a society where few people have real NGO experi-ence, Mercy Corps in Maluku took a more flexible approach to job descriptions. Staff members wereusually hired on the basis of basic knowledge of a sector or field and the potential they showed tounderstand and support the overall vision of Mercy Corps. This has meant a regular review both of theorganizational chart and also individual job descriptions. For example one program assistant who, itturned out, had strong management and organizational skills, but who found travel difficult for person-

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11.6 Role of Expatriate Staff

al reasons, was made into the Program Administrator to help develop and strengthen systems that wereweak. Regular and thorough evaluations of the team have enabled management to effectively assess thecapacities of individuals, allowing them to be rapidly promoted to positions with more responsibility asappropriate.

Additionally, the policy of the program has been to entrust staff with detailed information about howMercy Corps works, where resources come from, and to encourage questioning of policies, recommen-dations for changes and an open information policy within the organization while impressing on theteam the importance of confidentiality. This policy stems from the belief that if staff buy into theprocess and vision, they are far more likely to act responsibly with organizational resources. Traininghas been, whenever possible, made available to all staff including those not directly involved with pro-gram activities. This has been underlined by comments made from the guards about how they feel thatthey are a part of Mercy Corps and value the respect that they are given. Often international organiza-tions underestimate the representational power of staff such as guards, administration assistants anddrivers who often spend considerable time talking with people and can be some of the strongest advo-cates within the grass roots of the communities Mercy Corps works in.

There are currently four expatriate and 30 local staff positions in Maluku. People often commentthat this is a high ratio of international: local staff. However, in a conflict where everyone local iseither Muslim or Christian from Maluku, being an outsider lends a degree of neutrality to theoffice if tensions are running high. Expatriate staff members are the only ones who are able tocross borders and therefore have a full overview of the program. A policy decision was taken tohire staff from the immediate area whenever possible in an attempt to counter the brain drainthat affects conflict-ridden provinces, and to focus on building their capacity. Moreover, local staffunderstands the complexities of the conflict far better than outsiders from other parts of Indonesia andare better able to cope with the fluctuating situation. Expatriate staff have been hired with differenttechnical skills, which are passed on to the rest of the team. However, training staff from scratchrequires increased expatriate resources during the initial phases of a program, especially difficult whenworking on short term funding cycles, and the need to train interferes with the need to produce rapidprogram results. As the program evolves in Maluku more and more responsibility is being handed overto national staff with the eventual aim of nationalizing the program as the situation improves and localcapacity increases.

STAFF PROFILE: Febby Bakarbessy - Working through Adversity

Febby, like her colleagues working for Mercy Corps, shares a vision of improving the lives of people affected by theconflict in Maluku. Although she and her family have lived through violence and trauma, she has made a con-scious decision to contribute to changing the cycle of conflict.

Febby was raised in the village of Rumah Tiga across the bay from Ambon city and attended the university there.She received a degree and was certified as an English teacher. As part of her degree she had taught at a local

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high school in Rumah Tiga and was preparing for a career as a teacher.These plans were interrupted by the riots in January 1999. After a year offear, Febby decided she had to leave the island although this meant leavingbehind her parents and brothers. In January 2000 she went to Atambua inWest Timor and started to work for an INGO supporting refugees from EastTimor. While in West Timor she received word that her village had beenattacked, her house destroyed and her family forced to flee.

Febby was in charge of the NGO office on the day, in September of 2000,when angry militia burned the UNHCR office and killed three internationalworkers. Febby along with many others had to be evacuated to East Timor toescape the violence. She returned to Ambon feeling there were few prospectsfor the future.

In February 2001 Febby heard that Mercy Corps was hiring staff to work on aprogram to build local NGO capacity and support emergency relief and eco-nomic development. When her application was received several members ofthe existing Mercy Corps team urged management to hire her because they knew of her skills and fairness. Febbyhas now been with Mercy Corps in Maluku for over a year and has become an essential part of Mercy Corpscapacity building efforts at the NGO Community Center. She oversees the daily activities of the center, facilitatescoordination meetings, manages the informal discussions by NGOs and participates in the steering committee forthe Center that will be handed over to a board of local NGO activists. Since returning to Ambon, there have beenmoments of insecurity and tension. In May 2002 she had to evacuate her temporary housing in the middle of thenight, assisted by members of the Mercy Corps team, because fighting was too close to her house.

Febby refers to the Mercy Corps team as a ‘big family’ that makes work fun. She is respected by NGO leaders fromboth communities and values the fact that the work not only helps to build local NGO capacity but also her own.

STAFF PROFILE: Sabtu - Learning and Teaching Life Skills

Sabtu speaks impeccable English with a vocabulary that puts manynative speakers to shame! As one of the initial Mercy Corps Malukustaff, he has been working with the organization for over two years,during which time he has seen the staff grow from three to over 30with three field offices. In 1991 he moved from Southeast Maluku(over 1000km) to Ambon to study at the teacher training andEnglish departments. When the conflict broke out he was onlymonths away from finishing his thesis in linguistics, having complet-ed his studies and also worked on several environmental andanthropological research projects around the islands. Although hewas unable to complete his degree, Sabtu feels he has benefitedfrom the additional life experience. During Idul Fitri, the Muslim holi-day, in 1999, he was talking with Muslim and Christian friends whenthey heard that there was fighting across the bay in Ambon. Hespent that evening rushing through his village barefoot, looking forfriends who might be in danger. The next morning he could seeburned buildings across the bay in Ambon. He grabbed his bag,packed it with his books and headed to the military compoundwhere he slept outside for three nights. He spent the next year in Southeast Maluku helping to look after his fami-ly, helping Christians to move across the island and spending several nights together with 100 others from his vil-

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Febby with her colleague andfriend Deva outside the NGOcommunity Center.

Sabtu talks to an elderly IDP. As oneof the first national staff members tojoin Mercy Corps his contribution hasbeen invaluable.

lage when they were in fear of imminent attack. During this time his family’s townhouse was burned, as well asthe place where he had been staying in Ambon. In October 1999 he was offered a job with ACF where he helpedto organize food distributions. His honesty and commitment to true humanitarian work led him to the difficult deci-sion to take family members who were no longer in desperate need off the food lists. In April 2000 he was offereda job with Mercy Corps. Although he had considered running away from Maluku, Sabtu finally decided that heneeded to stay to try to make a difference. He joined Mercy Corps because he believed in the vision of assistingpeople through local partners and maintaining a neutral office. Although reluctant at first to meet with Christianshe was delighted to find that the Mercy Corps Christian staff member was a former supervisor of his from universi-ty. Sabtu has become one of the most senior and trusted members of the team. In August 2001 he was promotedto head of field office and was able to move back to Southeast Maluku. Other program staff members turn to himwhen they have problems with their work or questions about how this work fits with their religious beliefs. He saysthat this is the time for both Muslims and Christians to look at the true message of each of their religions andwork for peace. While he has not been able to complete his thesis yet, he hopes to do so this year with full sup-port from Mercy Corps. Although he will be quite happy to receive his degree at last, he says that Mercy Corps hasprovided him with many, many other skills both professional and personal.

(See Appendix 3: Chronology of Events in Maluku and Mercy Corps Interventions)

Although the security section is included towards the end of this document, concern for the security ofprogram staff and local partners has always been the number one priority for Mercy Corps man-agement. Early on, staff put measures in place to ensure that program requirements were neverallowed to compromise staff safety. The program was established in April of 2000. When freshviolence broke out in June and July 2000, it became apparent that to operate with a mixed teamof Muslims, Christians and expatriates, comprehensive security plans were needed. The MercyCorps’ GEO team member, who arrived in August of 2000, devoted considerable time to estab-lishing solid security procedures and ensuring that adequate communication equipment was procured.The Security Officer then took on this role when he arrived in November 2000. The creation of thispost was in itself a noteworthy commitment towards ensuring solid security management capacity.

The security manual and procedures are regularly updated. Due to unreliable phone communicationsall staff, including administrative assistants and guards, have radios at all times. These have often beenused during the night to establish where fighting has occurred and for staff to know that they are insafe areas. The office is set up in a neutral space that becomes a euphemism for a no man’s land if hos-tilities resume. Due to this fact, it has been critical that in times of conflict staff check in with theSecurity Officer before moving to that location.

Mercy Corps pays significant attention to proactive security measures. The most important of these ispromoting transparency in its activities and equitable distribution of assistance based on need. Both ofthese measures help create the impression in communities that Mercy Corps work is a resource forthem and encourage support for Mercy Corps’ presence in Maluku. This is essential, not only in thefield but also in the neutral area around the office. Considerable time was given to talking to and work-ing with the residents in the area and allaying fears about increasing neutral space. Security guards forthe NGO community center were hired from the vicinity to increase visibility and support in the com-munity. Both Muslims and Christians are employed as guards.

12. Security

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12.2 Separation of Responsibilities

Another important issue regarding security has been the question of Mercy Corps’ image in theprovince. On the one hand Mercy Corps aims to keep a low profile, believing that credit and responsi-bility for projects should go to local partners. However, the security of the team depends on communi-ty acceptance. Concerns about a lack of understanding of Mercy Corps led to the publication of a flyer‘Who is Mercy Corps?’ which could be distributed to village and camp leaders when in the field. Inaddition, when staff visits projects they take letters to village and district leaders explaining what hasbeen funded in that area. While in many cases local organizations have already met and coordinatedwith these leaders, in the instances where they have not, the documents ensure a level of accountabilityas well as a clarification of what Mercy Corps has funded.

It is clear that the Maluku conflict poses different threats to people from Maluku, Indonesians fromother different parts of the country and expatriates. Security policies were written with this in mind,but changing situations and perceptions of risk meant that for the team to be comfortable with policiesand decisions, and to have confidence in security procedures, there had to be a high level of participa-tion in formulating these policies. On the other hand it was also apparent that an entirely democraticsystem of security decisions risks becoming paralyzed and degenerating into an individualistic approachto security.

The senior management team is composed of the expatriate Security and Logistics Manager and fournational representatives of the team, two Christian and two Muslim. They were chosen for theirinvolvement in practical aspects of security management, their role in management of contacts or theirseniority within the team and were the Logistics Assistant, two Program Assistants and anAdministrative Assistant. Their role was fivefold:

1. Ensure that the whole staff were aware of, and followed, current security policy.2. Review the security policies and make recommendations for changes to the Security and

Logistics Officer.3. Be responsible for arranging representation and relationship building with key contacts in the

community and government.4. Act as focal points for collecting and disseminating information relevant to team security.5. Anonymously represent concerns of the rest of the team (primarily security related) to the

Security and Logistics Officer if people felt unable to do this directly.6. Assist with the revision of the Field Security Manual and ongoing evaluation of current

evacuation routes.

The team has met regularly as well as spontaneously, and has ensured that security responsibility is dele-gated to all team members and does not just rest with the Security Officer.

While many programs have the Head of Field Office/Program Manager also holding ultimate responsi-bility for security, a decision was made to separate the posts. While the Program Manager had overall

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12.1 Local Security Management Team (SMT)

12.3 Separation in Times of Tension

responsibility for the program, the Security Officer reported directly to Jakarta and could in theoryoverrule a decision made by the Program Manager on security grounds. An evaluation of this separationrevealed that all parties felt that this was a strong arrangement because it reduced the likelihood of con-flicts of interest. Managers are often put in a dilemma when they feel a strong pressure to implementthe program but are worried about putting staff at risk. This structure means that decisions always pri-oritize security without managers worrying that they would later be criticized for under-performance. AUnited Nations Security Officer visiting the program commented on how much he liked Mercy Corps’security structure.

When the program was developed it was clear that there might be times when, either there were noneutral spaces suitable for the whole team to meet in, or it would not be safe for staff to be seen meet-ing with people of another religion. In order to ensure that this did not mean the cessation of opera-tions, a mechanism was put in place to allow staff to operate out of separate locations for a limitedperiod of time:

• A senior local team member from each community was identified to lead the two groups in the event of a separation.

• Regular practices for evacuating the office and leaving with key documents were established. These also ensured that when the situation was tense, staff did not panic.

• Alternative safe office locations were established, where staff could meet (although in some circumstances Muslim staff have felt safer meeting together in one of their houses in order not to draw attention to themselves).

• Word of mouth means that NGOs soon know where they can go to continue working with Mercy Corps staff.

• A management structure was designed which would allow operations to be able to continue, particularly with regards to processing emergency grants in the event of international staff having to leave while it was still safe for national staff to continue operations.

While these systems are effective and have been put into place on at least three occasions, staff have alsovoiced strong reservations about working in separate offices if it is at all possible to avoid. They explainthat the office is like a ‘bubble’ of normal integrated life, where Muslims and Christians work togetherand build up trust. However once they are separated and dependent on biased media reports andrumors, distrust and worry rapidly starts to grow. When separation is necessary, the team seeks toreduce the gap by frequent telephone calls, meetings between senior team members in neutral locationswhen the situation is quiet, and team members meeting to exchange files and shared documents.

While trips can be made to many of the other islands with mixed teams of Muslim and Christian staff,

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In May 2002 when the office was forced toseparate the two teams managed to set upalternative offices quickly and approve overten grants within a one-week period.

12.4 Overcoming Freedom of Movement Challenges

12.5 Relations with Military

13. Lessons Learned and Recommendations

on Ambon Island it is not safe for local staff to cross borders. Although this can be highly frustratingfor sector specialists who want to know how their projects are running, a digital photo library, docu-menting the life of the projects, means that they are able to monitor from a distance and provide adviceto other program assistants on how to solve problems.

The military is engaged with the conflict themselves, both positively and negatively. In addition to thisthere are tensions between different groups within the military and the police that have led, at times, toclashes between different branches. Two of the other main INGOs in Maluku had a policy of mini-mum interaction with the military, while the UN saw them as their main protectors. Mercy Corps hastaken a middle ground approach, cultivating relations and explaining the program to all the key play-ers, while minimizing the amount of direct involvement with them. This approach appears to havebeen successful. The military occasionally stops at the office to ask about program activities or clarify arumor heard in the field, but also to pass on unofficial security information to Mercy Corps staff. Theyhave also offered support in the event of the need to evacuate the office and NGO community center.

The team sees the whole process in Maluku as a learning curve, throughout which the organization is constantly trying to build on past experiences to adapt programs and improve services to the conflict affected population in Maluku. Below are some of the salient points which Mercy Corps haslearned during the last two years and which it feels to be relevant not only for the program in Malukubut also elsewhere.

PROGRAMMATIC• Sector specialists: in a grants program that is designed to be able to respond rapidly to

emergency needs, it is not possible to assume technical knowledge and experience from the local organizations. The hiring of qualified technical staff, whether local or international, is essential in order to be able to verify the quality of the proposals and materials needed and to support and train partners.

• Language: it is necessary to constantly be vigilant about not getting drawn into language that is in itself divisive in the context of the conflict.

• Development of critical thinking skills: helping local staff and the organizations we work with to ‘think outside the box’ is one of the most valuable skills we can develop. This can be in terms of thinking beyond traditional categories for providing assistance, providing different models of living together, training in the principles of Do No Harm and how to mitigate negative impact and many more examples that are outlined in the study. These skills are not only invaluable for addressing current needs, but also provide skills for the future.

• Local partners are able to tailor projects to the individual needs of the community: one of the great advantages of working with local organizations is that, because they know their communities better than the average international NGO, they are able to design projects which meet the individual needs of the communities.

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• Pilot projects: in a situation that demands rapid response to humanitarian needs and requires program interventions that have not been tried before, pilot projects have proved a good way of establishing the relevance of a sector or methodology before expending considerable resources.

• Defining local organizations: conventional criteria for working with local organizations are not always relevant and may exclude committed groups of people with good ideas. Criteria for selecting partners should be specific to the context in which Mercy Corps is working.

• Local organizations are capable of responding to emergencies on a large scale: while this depends on the context, local capacity should not be underestimated and should be supported with additional capacity building efforts.

• Create networks to share information between Mercy Corps emergency/grants programs worldwide: during the course of the program Mercy Corps Maluku has established links with other parallel programs. The team believes that there is a strong opportunity to share ideas and lessons learned for emergency/grants programs between individuals and proposed that it might be possible to establish a discussion board, similar to the one already created by the Civil Society Program. While this has only been done informally to date, Mercy Corps Maluku feels that there is greater possibility for sharing ideas between field offices.

• Value of Emergency Preparedness activities: training local organizations in skills which enable them to respond more effectively when emergencies occur, should take place regardless of whether a conflict is considered over or not. Conflict cycles are complex and often unpredictable and these skills are useful should relief needs arise, even in the context of a recovery period.

• Materials available in the local language: materials on emergency response, management, conflict management and organizational development should be made available as early as possible in the local language. If they do not exist then funds should be sought for translations. Even local staff fluent in English, are more likely to read in their own language and the majority of local organizations are routinely denied access to concepts and tools when they are only available in a foreign language.

• Integrate capacity building into the rest of the program: in the initial phase of establishing a program through local partners, the local organizations are more likely to be interested in the need to provide assistance rather than wanting to focus on establishing systems. Combining assistance provision with capacity building efforts enables the needs of vulnerable communities to be met and local organizations are more likely to recognize the value of the support as they see the quality of their project activities improve.

• Provision of relief assistance and economic empowerment activities: this is possible at the same time in the same geographical area. Success depends on communities and local partners having a clear understanding of the differences between the two and agreeing with the reasons behind distributions as opposed to revolving grants.

• Maintenance of a balance between meeting immediate needs of vulnerable populations and sustainable growth of the organization: It is not always easy to turn down donor funds but at times this is necessary to ensure balanced growth of the program.

SYSTEMS• Establish good documentation systems from the start: the weekly situation reports, initiated

in October 2000, have provided regular external documentation of activities. This practice has received positive feedback from Mercy Corps HQ, donors and other interested groups. A similar internal mechanism to collate problems encountered and possible solutions would also be

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valuable. This is also important for new staff coming in to facilitate an easier orientation. • Internal transparency: this is essential in contexts where rumors run rife and there is a lot of

suspicion of foreign organizations. Local staff members are ambassadors of Mercy Corps work in their communities and if they understand the reasons behind why Mercy Corps operates in a certain way or engages in a certain type of program they are more like to pass on accurate information their communities.

• Systematic approach to incorporating monitoring and evaluation into future programs:Mercy Corps Maluku needs to identify a means of feeding lessons learned back into program activities, rather than treating each grant as separate. A mechanism needs to be developed to evaluate the impact of training and capacity building support in a more comprehensive and less anecdotal manner.

• Importance of laying solid foundations: the relative ease with which it was possible to establish the quick impact grant program can be attributed both to the relations that were built beforehand but also to the groundwork laid by the GEO team member during his time in Maluku. This foundation provided a solid base from which it was easy to develop other program activities.

• Field office vision statement: creating a vision statement in line with Mercy Corps worldwide goals as well as the Mercy Corps Indonesia country plans proved critical to enabling the team to maintain focus. It should be periodically reviewed to confirm its continuing relevance and make necessary adaptations.

• Availability of private funds: without a commitment from Mercy Corps to invest private resources in Maluku, the program might never have been established. This investment was critical to the establishment of the program at an expedient point in time. In addition the creative use of already funded donor resources from USDA greatly facilitated the speed with which the program could set up.

With the security situation still highly unpredictable, Mercy Corps nevertheless aims to move increas-ingly away from interventions directed towards IDPs and focus on those areas where people are able toreturn by providing them with more shelter and water/sanitation support. Mercy Corps also aims toexpand the coverage of economic empowerment projects and work towards creating sustainable net-works of NGOs. Capacity building activities will continue and the aim is to turn the NGO Centerover to local management through the steering committee. With the arrival of two expatriate sectorspecialists, the aim is to tighten up the overall standard of project activities and improve the capacity ofexisting partners.

Program staff members are often asked how long Mercy Corps intends to stay in Maluku. The commit-ment to the region is in terms of indicators of change and recovery rather than time. Although thesehave not been explicitly formulated they include: stabilization of the environment and a return topeace, a situation where the majority of IDPs have returned home or resettled and have the means withwhich to sustain themselves and their families and, when a core group of local organizations is able tobe self sufficient and adapt to meet the continuing needs of the populations and advocate for theseneeds to government.

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14. Future Directions for the Program in Maluku

15. Conclusion

In the future Mercy Corps will, above all, strive to remain relevant and responsive to the changing situ-ation in Maluku. Mercy Corps will continue to work to empower local communities and local organi-zations to take responsibility for improving the conditions of conflict affected people and communities.As the emergency needs decrease, Mercy Corps will focus more and more of its time and energy onsupporting return and recovery (especially activities such as economic empowerment, peace-buildingand support for the durable return of IDPs) and supporting local government and NGOs to find long-term solutions for the province. These activities will continue to be viewed and reviewed applyingMercy Corps civil society principles of peaceful change, accountability and participation.

The Mercy Corps Maluku program has been regarded as a good example of how the Civil Society prin-ciples can be used to underscore and reinforce good emergency and recovery interventions. It has alsodemonstrated that it is possible to provide high quality projects through local partners in emergency sit-uations and unstable environments, and that partnering with local organizations can ensure more rapidand equally effective response to humanitarian needs.

It is, however, important to note that one of the reasons that the Maluku program has been successfulis because it has been molded, adapted and frequently changed to fit the local context and that in otherenvironments it might not have been the most appropriate intervention. Mercy Corps’ entry intoAmbon Island came during a lull in the violence that allowed relations to be established andtrust built with the NGOs. While the team now has confidence in the capacity of the localorganizations to be able to respond rapidly to relatively large scale needs, this would not havebeen the case two years ago. Thus the timing of the entry is critical to determining the degree towhich it is possible to act through local partners. While it is apparent that relatively large scalehumanitarian and economic needs exist in the province, for the most part people have not been in acritical life or death situation waiting for assistance. This has also provided Mercy Corps and its part-ners with a little more space and time to determine the most appropriate project interventions and tomitigate against possible negative side effects of any activity.

The tension between assisting the greatest number of vulnerable people possible, while not compromis-ing on program quality by funding local organizations with insufficient capacity, is a theme that runsthroughout the study. Mercy Corps has realized that it should capitalize on the local resources available,acknowledging that not all the local partners will continue after the conflict is over but that the skillswill be useful when these leaders return to their ‘normal’ jobs whether in the public or private sectors.At the same time Mercy Corps currently aims to focus on building the capacity of those organizationsthat are most likely to continue post conflict.

The program is a dynamic and constantly evolving one. It is far from perfect but the team is constantlystriving to apply lessons learned back into the program to develop better methodologies and strategiesto address the needs of the vulnerable conflict affected people in the province and increase their copingmechanisms in the future.

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16. Appendices

17. Glossary

18. Bibliography

1. Map Of Maluku2. Map Of Indonesia3. Chronology of Events in Maluku and Mercy Corps Interventions4. Donor Funding To Mercy Corps In Maluku5. Summary Of Mercy Corps Grants To Local Organizations6. Mercy Corps Maluku Vision Statement7. Mercy Corps Civil Society Framework

ACF ..........................Action Contre la FaimCDA ..........................Collaborative for Development ActionCSPS ..........................Center for Security and Peace StudiesFKM ..........................Maluku Sovereignty Front - (the Maluku independence movement)IDP ..........................Internally Displaced PersonKabupaten...................District - next level down from the provinceKecamatan ..................Sub districtKopassus .....................Army Special ForcesLaskar Jihad ................Radical Muslim militia, originating from Java although including

..........................local Muslim fightersMSF-B ........................Medicins sans Frontiers - BelgiumNGO ..........................Non Governmental OrganizationOTI/DAI-SWIFT.......Office for Transitional Initiatives/ Development Alternatives Inc. RFA ..........................Request for ApplicationsUNRC ........................United Nations Resource Center (part of UNOCHA)OFDA.........................Office of US Foreign Disaster AssistanceUSDA.........................United States Department for AgricultureINGO.........................International Non Governmental Organization

Indonesia: Overcoming Murder and Chaos in Maluku, International Crisis Group, December 2000.

Indonesia: The Search for Peace in Maluku, International Crisis Group, February 2002.

Do No Harm: How Aid Can Support Peace - Or War, Mary B. Anderson, Lynne Rienner Publishers Inc, 1999.

The Sphere Project: Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards in Disaster Response, Oxfam Publishing, 2000.

Mercy Corps Maluku Shelter/IDP assessment, August 31 2001.

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Appendix 1

Map of Maluku

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Appendix 2

Map of Indonesia (showing regions in which Mercy Corps is working)

Sumatra

Jakarta and JavaCentral Sulaw

esiM

aluku (3 offices)

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Appendix 3

Chronology of Events in Maluku and Mercy Corps Interventions18

Period Key Events Mercy Corps Activity

An argument between a Christian passenger and Muslim bus driver on January 19, 1999 develops into a fight that quickly spreads into days of violence with many casualties and much destruction of housing. The fighting quickly spreads to the nearby islands of Haruku, Seram and Saparua because of rumors.

January – February 1999

There is a four-month period of calm during which time Indonesia’s first free national and regional elections in 44 years take placelargely without violence. May 12, 1999, a peace declaration is signed between religious leaders, community and traditional leaders and youth figures and organizations.

March – June 1999

From July 27, major riots take place with hundreds of shops and homes destroyed. In August fighting breaks out in the newly created province of North Maluku (which until 1999 had been part of Maluku province), primarily due to political and ethnic not religious reasons. The second half of 1999 saw regular fighting across Maluku province with many casualties.

In December 1999 Mercy Corps conducts its first assessment mission to Ambon.

July – December 1999

January – May 2000

January 7, 2000, over 100,000 Muslims demonstrate in Jakarta calling for a jihad in Maluku in order to save the Muslims. In May the Laskar Jihad militia group begin to arrive in Maluku. 3,000 are reported to arrive in the province. They take control of the other Muslim militia groups.

Tensions rise within both religious groups.

Muslim militias start to try to clear Christian villages out of key transportation corridors.

A second assessment mission is conducted in January 2000.

In March Mercy Corps establishes an operational presence, hires a Muslim and Christian staff member and set up an office in the neutral part of town.

The Conflict Management Group comes out to assist with an analysis of the situation.

Mercy Corps issues an RFA for grants to local NGOs for food security projects.

Due to the tensions on the island and fighting,Mercy Corps pulls out international staff for one week at the end of May

18 This is not an exhaustive chronology but documents the main events, particularly in relation to Mercy Corpsactivity. For more detailed accounts of the conflict see bibliography.

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Period Key Events Mercy Corps Activity

On 27 June, President Abdurrahman Wahid declares a state of civil emergency, giving the police and military wide powers to act but reporting to the Governor.

By July 2000 there were approximately 14,000 troops in Maluku.

Many of the villages across the bay from Ambon town as well as the main university of Pattiumura are destroyed. Large-scale displacement of populations.

In August 2000, the Yon Gab, Joint Battalion arrives made up of soldiers from other parts of Indonesia with the hope that they would not become involved with one side or the other. Open clashes between Muslims and Christians become more rare.

June – August 2000

September – December 2000

January – March 2001

A bomb is thrown into the second floor of the library. Mercy Corps relocates with the assistance of government representatives to a room in the Governor’s building.

All expatriates are withdrawn from Ambon for three to four weeks because of the fighting (apart from two MSF representatives). Local staff continues to process grants.

In August a member of Mercy Corps’ Global Emergency Operations team travels to Ambon to conduct an emergency needs assessment. 25 NGOs are invited to submit applications for emergency grants, primarily non food items.

Incidents occur regularly although there is no wide spread displacement on Ambon island.

In December, approximately 200 Muslim and Christian leaders meet in Yogyakarta to explore the possibility of reach reconciliation in Maluku.

Forced conversion of Christians on remote islands of Kesoui and Teor off Seram causes displacement of 800 families to Southeast Maluku.

Mercy Corps begins to issue emergency grants.

In October an OFDA delegation visits.

Ambon and a grant agreement targeting approximately 80,000 conflict-affected people is funded.

A permanent Program Manager and Security/Logistics Manager arrive in Ambon.

In December a second RFA for emergency grants is funded and the first projects funded in Seram and Southeast Maluku (for Kesoui/Teor IDPs).

On the eve of the second anniversary of the conflict troops conduct “sweepings” in Ambon. During the following days several police officers are arrested for partisan involvement with the conflict. Relations between the army and the Ambon police deteriorate further.

The situation remains calm in Southeast Maluku and IDPs begin to return.

The situation remains relatively calm with sporadic incidents.

Mercy Corps staff size increases to 12 in January and 18 in March.

In February a second RFA for food security grants is issued.

A third expatriate arrives in Ambon with responsibility for NGO and economic development.

Mercy Corps begins to hold regular trainings, meetings and workshops with mixed groups of Muslim and Christian NGOs.

This chronology has been compiled largely from the Mercy Corps situation reports and the ICGreports written on Maluku. For more detailed information see these reports in detail.

67

Period Key Events Mercy Corps Activity

Tensions rise in the build up to April 25th, anniversary of the declaration of an independent state in Maluku, when members of the Maluku Sovereignty Front (FKM) raise independence flags.

The leader of the FKM and the leader of Laskar Jihad are arrested although later both released.

Starting on May 20th, masked men launch a series of attacks in Christian areas of Ambon resulting in eighteen deaths and widespread fear.

On 14th June, the Joint Battalion conducts wide spread sweeping in Muslim areas of town, resulting in 23 Muslim deaths and the destruction of the Laskar Jihad radio station and a Laskar medical clinic.

April – June 2001

July – October 2001

November – December 2001

Tensions between religious groups lead Mercy Corps to separate the office on two occasions. Staff continues to process grants although Capacity Building activities decline.

Mercy Corps is funded by OTI/DAI-SWIFT to open an NGO Community Center to provide resources and neutral meeting spaces to local NGOs.

A six-month grant is signed with UNDP to provide more grant funds to local organizations. OFDA funds emergency programs in Maluku for a further six months.

An OTI/DAI-SWIFT shelter assessment of all the major islands in Maluku indicates there are areas that have been calm for over a year and leads MC to formulate a clearer strategy for supporting return.

The situation returns to a state of relative calm.

The events of September 11th and the ensuing bombing in Afghanistan increase tensions towards internationals from Muslims but no direct threats are made towards humanitarian organizations or individuals.

A sub office is established in Tual, Southeast Maluku.

With more staff recruitment the number of grants funded increases.

A second UNDP grant is signed.

Sporadic incidents culminate in the bombing and sinking of the main ferry in Ambon, the California, with 18 killed.

Activities continue as planned.

Based on the findings of the shelter assessment, Mercy Corps is funded by OTI/DAI-SWIFT to rehabilitate school structures.

OFDA grants a six-month no-cost extension to finish grants.

In February two new expatriates arrive.

OTI/DAI-SWIFT funds Mercy Corps to establish a sub office in Seram and to provide additional capacity building resources for Seram and Southeast Maluku.

In April, Mercy Corps is forced to split offices twice because of the violence. However program activities continue with reduced capacity building.

The Coordinating Minister for Peoples’ Welfare, Jusuf Kalla, becomes actively engaged in trying to solve the conflict. Following lengthy discussions, a meeting is held in Malino, Sulawesi and a peace accord signed between 35 Muslim and 35 Christian delegates. This leads to wide spread celebrations in Ambon and considerable increased movement between Muslim and Christian areas of town.

However on 4th April, the Governor’s building, one of the main neutral meeting points in town is burned to a shell.

The situation then becomes calmer until 25th April when FKM supporters again raise flags (this time on balloons) and trigger violence in the city.

Muslim Militia attacks a Christian village burning 35 houses.

January – April 2002

68

Donor

12345678910111213

No.

Grant A

ward Title

SectorLocation

Aw

ard Date

End Date

Total

OFD

A

OFD

A

OTI/D

AI-SWIFT

OTI/D

AI-SWIFT

OTI/D

AI-SWIFT

OTI/D

AI-SWIFT

OTI/D

AI-SWIFT

OTI/D

AI-SWIFT

OTI/D

AI-SWIFT

OTI/D

AI-SWIFT

OTI/D

AI-SWIFT

UN

DP

UN

DP

Total Grant A

ward

Quick Im

pact Grants: N

FI, Shelter, W

ater/Sanitation and Emergency

Preparedness

Reconstruction of M

uslim and

Christian H

ouses

Funding for workshop by C

MG

/CD

R

on Com

munity Integration

NG

O C

omm

unity Center

Quick Im

pact Grants in Sectors of:

NFI and Shelter

Provision of Equipment & M

aterials for N

GO

Center

Shelter Assessment

Quick Im

pact Grants in Sectors of:

NFI, Shelter, W

ater/Sanitation, Em

ergency Preparedness and Econom

ic Empow

erment

NG

O C

omm

unity Center extension

School Rehabilitation

Economic Em

powerm

ent Grants

Capacity Building and G

rants Program

in Tual and Seram

Quick Im

pact Grants in Sectors of:

NFI, Shelter, W

ater/Sanitation, Em

ergency Preparedness and Em

ergency Livelihood Support

Emergency

Emergency

Emergency

Emergency

Emergency

Civil Society

Civil Society

Civil Society

Civil Society

Civil Society

Civil Society

Recovery

Economic

Empow

erment

Maluku

Maluku

Maluku

Maluku

Maluku

Maluku

Waiam

e, Ambon

Ambon

Ambon

Ambon

Ambon

S & SE Maluku

Tual & Seram

27-Nov-00

14-Dec-00

1-Mar-01

29-Mar-01

1-Apr-01

15-Apr-01

8-Jun-01

6-Jul-01

19-Oct-01

18-Dec-01

15-Feb-02

15-Feb-02

5-Apr-0230-Sep-02

27-May-02

31-Jun-01

15-Apr-01

15-Oct-01

30-Sep-01

15-Jun-01

31-Aug-01

31-Dec-01

30-Apr-02

18-Apr-02

15-May-02

30-Apr-02

$3,205,398

$1,532,634

$3,991

$19,968

$23,700

$200,000

$22,725

$25,841

$300,000

$15,335

$32,592

$90,000

$90,000

$848,612

Grants awarded to M

ercy Corps in Maluku: April 2000 - April 2002

Appendix 4

69

Sum

mar

y of

Gra

nts

Fund

ed t

o lo

cal P

artn

ers

April

200

0 - A

pril

2002

Appendix 5

Ambo

n

Band

a

Buru

Har

uku

Sapa

rua

Sera

m

Sout

heas

t Mal

uku

Tota

ls

Isla

ndN

on F

ood

Item

Shel

ter

Wat

/San

Scho

ols

Cap

acity

Bui

ldin

gA

gric

ultu

reSe

eds/

Tool

sFi

sher

ies

Mic

ro C

redi

tTo

tals

3640

,531

1,07

1,38

2,85

0 12,

570

60,9

29,0

00 1415

,792

503,

402,

660 27

33,5

151,

127,

933,

900 15

16,3

2250

3,40

2,66

0 9310

8,73

03,

267,

051,

070

3313

,758

1,13

9,23

6,25

0 11,

130

43,0

56,0

00 75,

838

1,59

5,92

3,63

3 282

111

5,83

1,50

0 22,

278

185,

128,

500 6

4,99

452

6,06

3,25

0 136,

763

1,51

4,16

2,50

0 6435

,582

5,11

9,40

1,63

3

272,

660

1,25

7,24

9,32

5 21,

321

69,1

22,0

00 190

665

,516

,500 3

6,98

814

0,80

5,35

0 718

,320

414,

188,

550 12

11,7

3355

1,24

0,30

0 5241

,928

2,49

8,12

2,02

5

165

011

5,24

2,50

0 126

524

,417

,450 1

180

32,3

00,0

00 498

536

1,84

4,10

0 72,

080

533,

804,

050

12

1,57

8,52

0,86

2 457

010

5,96

5,00

0 11,

000

10,0

00,0

00 171,

570

1,69

4,48

5,86

2

623

314

4,78

4,05

0 110

026

,950

,000 7

333

171,

734,

050

786

513

0,02

4,46

0 145

048

,903

,000 8

1,31

517

8,92

7,46

0

17 765

210,

670,

500 1

785

27,7

84,2

50 11,

196

56,6

54,5

00 192,

746

295,

109,

250

3910

,985

1,09

0,60

1,80

2 145

048

,903

,000 1

500

44,8

80,0

00 4111

,935

1,18

4,38

4,80

2

178

70,4

476,

737,

712,

599 3

4,48

513

1,76

9,25

0 2624

,116

2,29

0,67

1,74

3 53,

103

270,

302,

500 6

9,76

637

0,81

3,85

0 4958

,484

2,56

2,94

4,80

0 4135

,818

2,57

8,80

5,46

0

p bR

p p bR

p p bR

p p bR

p p bR

p p bR

p p bR

p p bR

p

308

206,

219

14,9

43,0

20,2

02=$

1,49

4,30

2

TOTA

L N

UM

BER

OF

PRO

JEC

TSTO

TAL

NU

MB

ER O

F B

ENEF

ICIA

RIE

STO

TAL

RU

PIA

H V

ALU

E

p =

num

ber o

f pro

ject

sb

= nu

mbe

r of i

ndivi

dual

s (a

ssum

ing

5 pe

r fam

ily)

Rp

= R

upia

h va

lue

of p

roje

cts

Vision Statement for Mercy Corps Maluku19

Mercy Corps will focus on three sectoral areas of activity in Maluku:

1. Humanitarian2. Food Security/Economic3. Peace Building

Our goal is to achieve these activities by working with and through local organizations, communitiesand institutions to meet needs and help address the root causes of the conflict.

Through our work on Ambon we will:• Address humanitarian need.• Support positive dialogue between communities and non-violent conflict management.• Increase the resilience of vulnerable communities. Reduce dependency on aid.• Increase local organizational capacity to respond to community need and help them to

represent these needs to leaders. • Support activities which work towards the re-integration of divided communities.

Principles to work by:• We aim to create an integrated program in Maluku. • Activities may fall under one or more of the sectors. • All activities look to support local organizations. • We will prioritize projects in the humanitarian and economic sectors, which actively

support the peace building process.

70

Appendix 6

19 This vision statement was created in November 2000 and has served to help Mercy Corps focus its activities inthe province and periodically reviewed although no major changes have been made to date. The major discussionhas been about whether Mercy Corps should explicitly mention peace building as an objective or whether it shouldbe more discreetly mentioned elsewhere in the document.

Civil Society Framework

71

Appendix 7

Established Rule of Law

Vibrant Civic

Secto

rE

conomicOpportunityRespectforHum

anR

ight

sP

olit

ical

Dev

elop

men

t

Secure, Productive and Just

Communities

Participation

Accountability

PeacefulChange

Busi

ness

Governm

ent

CivicOrganizations

Charting a Healthy, Vibrant Civil Society

KEYThe Center: goal/outcome, possible with foundation of a healthy civil societyThe Three Principles: behavior that characterizes a functioning civil societyThe Actors: key players — the dynamic interrelationship among these three

sectors provides a foundation for positive social changeThe Outer Ring: environment in which a healthy, vibrant civil society thrives

3015 SW First Ave ı Portland, OR 97201 USA ı tel 503.796.6800 ı fax 503.796.6844

1730 Rhode Island Ave NW, Suite 707 ı Washington, DC 20036 USA ı tel 202.463.7384 ı fax 202.463.7322

10 Beaverhall Road ı Edinburgh EH7 4JE Scotland, UK ı tel 44.131.477.3677 ı fax 44.131.477.3678

JI. Ampera Raya No. 4A Kemang ı Ragunun, Jakarta Selatan, Indonesia 12550 ı tel 62.911.315390 ı fax 62.21.782.8610

www.mercycorps.org

Mercy Corps is an international relief and development agency thatexists to alleviate suffering, poverty and oppression by helping people

build secure, productive and just communities. Since 1979, Mercy Corpshas been assisting people afflicted by conflict or disaster by implementing

programs that increase food security, economic opportunity and the development of civil society. In Indonesia, Mercy Corps works in Java,

Sumatra, Central Sulawesi and Maluku.