Rezza Zimah, an actor from Jakarta who has a hearing impairment, has won the UN in Indonesia’s inaugural Show Your Sign competition, a sign language dance choreography contest the UN and partner organizations launched in the run-up to the International Day of Persons with Disabilities on December 3. “I practiced a lot in front of the mirror, and my wife helped as well,” Rezza said at an online awards ceremony on Dec 9, explaining that he chose to devise choreography to Justin Bieber’s 2020 hit Intentions because “that song gave me goosebumps. The music was so upbeat, and I could feel the bass.” Opening in early November, the Show Your Sign contest asked Indonesian social media users to create original choreography for one of ten pre-selected songs using sign language. It was co-devised by the UN in Indonesia and the International Labour Organization (ILO), in partnership with the Indonesian Association for the Welfare of the Deaf (Gerkatin), and the affiliated Sign Language Center in Indonesia (Pusbisindo.) “I congratulate Rezza and all the entrants who posted such engaging responses to Show Your Sign,” said Valerie Julliand, the United Nations Resident Coordinator in Indonesia. “A sense of joy and creativity is palpable across so many of the videos. In reaching so many thousands of people they make a significant contribution to popularizing Indonesian sign-language.” In addition to Rezza, who won a top prize of IDR 5-million, the judging panel awarded second and third prizes respectively to Andri Indarwan, who devised sign-language choreography to the song Manusia Kuat by Tulus, and Nenna Phanuela (Athena Limbong), who danced with her mother to ABBA’s Dancing Queen. One Instagram Reel, posted by Bali-based Deaf comedian Wayan Mindra, received more than 1,600 likes and has been watched more than 37,000 times. In devising his winning choreography, Rezza said that he tried to follow the music’s rhythm and especially its bassline. One of the challenges was conveying the meaning of the lyrics succinctly: “I tried to understand the lyrics well and I tried to think about how to minimize the movements because the lyrics contained a lot of words,” Rezza said. Hearing impairments are the most common impairments among people with severe disabilities in Indonesia, prompting the UN in Indonesia to focus on popularizing sign language among other initiatives around International Day of Persons with Disabilities this year. In an interview with the head of Pusbisindo Laura Lesmana Wijaya, the UN Resident Coordinator explained that the experience of being cut off from our normal networks during the pandemic prompted the UN to focus on people with hearing impairments for this year's campaign. “We could not see the people we loved, the people we worked with. The only thing we had was a screen in order to have communication,” Julliand said in the interview, “we need to make sure everybody, whatever their ability or disability, can communicate." Julliand added that the UN in Indonesia was capitalizing on momentum around sign language, encapsulated by K-Pop group BTS's recent performance of a song that included sing-language choreography at the UN General Assembly. Show Your Sign is part of a series of integrated campaigns the UN in Indonesia organized around the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence, which runs from Nov. 25 to Dec. 10. In addition to promoting the use of sign language, the campaign serves as a platform for members of Indonesia’s Deaf community to show solidarity with survivors of gender-based violence. Wijaya, the head of Pusbisindo said Show Your Sign had successfully reached many thousands, “but we wish to reach uncountable more people so that we can stand stronger and ensure greater awareness of all forms of discrimination and stop them right now.” The experiences of people with disabilities in Indonesia are under-researched. But a study conducted by the ILO slated for publication next year shows that less than half of people with disabilities in Indonesia are currently in the labour force. People with disabilities in Indonesia have lower educational attainment, with around 75% having only graduated from elementary school. And those that are employed mainly work in the informal sector, with a large pay gap compared with workers without disabilities. Globally, people with disabilities have been disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and its socio-economic fallout. The UN and the ILO advocate a human rights-based approach to disability. This means that instead of society regarding people with disabilities as objects of philanthropy in need of medical interventions, society should focus on removing the barriers that can prevent people with disabilities from realizing their potential and deprive them of their inalienable human rights. More than 40 UN staff from the ILO in Indonesia recently enrolled in sign language classes provided by Pusbisindo. Next year, the UN in Indonesia is also rolling out disability inclusion initiatives across UN Agencies related to more inclusive human resources management, including the recruitment of persons with disabilities, improving digital accessibility, and improving physical accessibility for persons with disabilities. *** For more information on Show Your Sign and to see all the competition entries, search #ShowYourSign on Instagram For more information on the Indonesian Association for the Welfare of the Deaf, Gerakan Untuk Kesejahteraan Tuna Rungu Indonesia: https://www.gerkatin.org/ For more information on the Sign Language Center in Indonesia, Pusat Bajasa Isyarat Indonesia: https://pusbisindo.org/

“In the past two years, my reality, yours, and many others, has changed dramatically.” So begins the letter 20-year-old Indonesian student Nadya Zafira penned to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres ahead of COP26, the crucial conference being hailed as the most important global gathering on climate change in years. In her wide-ranging letter, Zafira, an international relations student at Indonesia’s Universitas Gadjah Mada, addresses the inequalities the COVID-19 pandemic has made stark and what that portends for the looming climate emergency. She also considers whose voices are prominent and whose are marginalized in global conversations on climate change. “The youth is not a monolithic group,” Zafira says, noting the different experience of young Indonesians living in urban centres like Jakarta and indigenous youth living in rural communities. This diversity, she says, “should not be an impediment, rather it becomes an opportunity to have a richer experience of youth activism.” Zafira’s letter was among 43 submitted to the UN Association of Indonesia (UNAI) as part of a competition the youth-led association organized in the run up to UN Day on October 24. UNAI’s judging panel said it hoped Zafira’s entry would “inspire all actors, including youth and the United Nations, to care more about our shared world and act for a better future.” UN Resident Coordinator Valerie Julliand is the highest UN official in Indonesia and the Secretary General’s representative in the country. Read Zafira's prize-winning letter as well as the UN Resident Coordinator's reply below. Nadya Zafira’s letter to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres. https://www.instagram.com/p/CVuyvH_POWZ/ Resident Coordinator Valerie Julliand’s reply to Nadya Zafira. https://www.instagram.com/p/CWKtMZ9pacf/

One recent Thursday, Ali Madad Ibrahimi accompanied an elderly man from Afghanistan to a registration desk under a big red and white tent in Jakarta’s central district. He translated instructions into the Afghan Dari language, and the pair entered a spacious hall where blue-uniformed officers sat behind rows of desks. He stayed by the man’s side until a COVID-19 vaccine dose has been safely injected into his left arm. However, until just over a month ago, Mr. Ibrahimi – himself an Afghan refugee and an official interpreter with the UN’s refugee agency (UNHCR) since 2019 – had to do his work virtually: Government COVID-19 regulations meant that even boarding a bus to a neighbourhood where many Afghan refugees lived, required a vaccine certificate. That changed in late September though, when Mr. Ibrahimi became one of the first refugees in Indonesia to be fully vaccinated, thanks to a private scheme jointly organized by several UN agencies. Around the same time, on September 21, a new decree from Indonesia’s Ministry of Health promised to dramatically increase access to vaccinations for the 13,273 refugees in Indonesia, reflecting broader steps towards greater inclusion for one of the most vulnerable groups in the country. “I’m very grateful to the UN team for providing vaccines for me and other refugees”, he says. “Now that I have been fully vaccinated, I can get back to my routine, assisting my fellow refugees who need interpreters”. ‘Two days full of nightmares’ More than half of the refugees in Indonesia are from Afghanistan, and the majority of them are members of the Hazara ethnic minority, a mostly Shiite Muslim community who were brutally oppressed under the Taliban, before the US invasion in 2001. For many, watching the Taliban retake Kabul in August, was a devastating reminder of the circumstances that forced them to flee.  Since retaking control of Afghanistan, Taliban officials have forcibly evicted thousands of Hazara families from their homes, according to the NGO Human Rights Watch. Another rights organization, Amnesty International, reported in October that the Taliban had massacred 13 ethnic Hazara people in Daykundi province, including a 17 year-old girl. For Mr. Ibrahimi, a former baker, such reports bring back memories of the day in June 2013 that Taliban soldiers stopped him on a journey to buy ingredients for his bakery in Afghanistan’s Kandahar province. They accused him of selling bread to US soldiers and tortured him while he was in detention. Fearing for his own safety and that of his family if he stayed, Mr. Ibrahimi fled Afghanistan overland, leaving his wife, one child, and a new-born daughter behind. “Two days full of nightmares,” he says. “I was lucky they released me in the end.” After crossing the border into Pakistan, a smuggler convinced Mr. Ibrahimi to go to Indonesia where, he was told, he could be resettled. That turned out not to be true, and he has been living in Jakarta for the past eight years. Restrictions on basic human rights Many refugees in Indonesia have waited a similar length of time. Indonesia considers itself a transit country, one through which refugees and asylum seekers travel en route to a safe third country. But because opportunities for resettlement in a third country are virtually non-existent, many refugees and asylum seekers end up immobilized for years with no prospect of resettlement or a safe return. The hardship of refugees in Indonesia is exacerbated by restrictions on some of their most basic human rights: they are deprived of their right to work, for example, and their access to school is often impeded. Indonesia is not a State party to the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees, the key legal framework that defines who is a refugee and details the rights to which refugees are entitled, but the country has ratified key human rights treaties and, says Ann Maymann, UNHCR’s representative for Indonesia, the country “therefore has international obligations to ensure that refugees can exercise their basic rights”. ‘COVID-19 does not know borders’ Discrepancies in access to COVID-19 vaccinations at a national level, mirror broader inequalities that have inhibited the global effort to stop the spread of the pandemic. “COVID-19 does not know borders, differentiate between lower middle and upper-income economies, or care whether you are poor or rich,” says Valerie Julliand, UN Resident Coordinator for Indonesia. “The Ministry of Health’s new decree is an important step towards leaving no one behind and is a welcome expression of solidarity with some of the country’s most vulnerable communities.” Although COVID-19 has devastated both advanced economies and the developing world, refugees are among those who have been hit the hardest. While many governments provided subsidies to offset the economic impact of the pandemic and helped school children with distance learning, refugees often did not have access to such measures. Meanwhile, around 86 per cent of refugees are hosted in developing and low-income countries, which tend to have less resilient healthcare systems and struggle to cope with the needs of their own populations. Vaccinations can reduce pressure on those healthcare systems, but refugees did not often have access they required. UNHCR says that the precariousness of refugees’ situation in Indonesia has led to a deterioration in refugees’ mental health. Refugee and writer Hussain Shah Rezaie claimed in a recent Op-Ed for the Jakarta Post newspaper, that 12 refugees had died by suicide in the previous two years. Refugees are an asset In the same way that equitable access to COVID-19 vaccinations benefits both refugees and the communities that host them, better access to education and employment for refugees ends up also being universally beneficial, says Ms. Maymann. “We continue to advocate for refugees’ inclusion and for the government to see that refugees are an asset,” she says. “Refugees bring productivity, they can start businesses that employ locals, pay taxes, and generate income. “They enrich the culture of the host countries by bringing different practices, foods, and religions. And given the chance, they can contribute to a stronger and more vibrant world.” For Mr. Ibrahimi, becoming vaccinated was an important step towards greater inclusion and a decent life. “I don’t mind living in Indonesia, the people are very nice,” he says, “I hope one day I can open my own bakery and make Afghan bread popular here, or in another country, if I ever get resettled”. The UN in Indonesia To date, more than 40 million COVID-19 vaccine doses have been delivered to Indonesia, through the COVAX mechanism, supported by UNICEF and the World Health Organization. But outside of private schemes and the determined efforts of some local governors, refugees were not included in the national program until recently. The private scheme that enabled Mr. Ibrahimi to be vaccinated, was jointly organized by UNHCR, IOM, and UNICEF and the Resident Coordinator’s Office. The decree allows refugees with UNHCR-issued identity documents to access both private sector vaccination schemes and the national COVID-19 vaccination scheme in areas where at least 70% of the population have received a first vaccine dose. That means that refugees in up to six of Indonesia’s 34 provinces are now eligible for the COVID-19 shot. To date, UNHCR calculates that more than 4,800 of Indonesia’s population of 13,273 refugees, or about 36%, have received at least one COVID-19 vaccination dose. That falls some way short of the 58% of the general population the Indonesian government says had received at least one vaccination dose as of 31 October. UNHCR works closely with the Indonesian Government to ensure the refugees can live in dignity while they are waiting for a more permanent solution. This includes continuing advocacy with local governments for more refugee children to enroll in national schools, providing digital and entrepreneurship training for refugees, and advocating for refugees to have access to health services, including access to COVID-19 vaccines.      

Nissa Wargadipuras’s earliest memories involve learning how to live with nature. Her childhood home’s backyard in the hilly town of Garut, West Java was a little forest where her father planted vegetables, herbs and fruits. Her mother produced traditional medicine from the plants for their family and their neighbours. “Whenever I came home from school, my mother always asked me to do some “hunting,” Nissa says. The tradition of the “backyard hunt” has long been part of ethnic Sundanese life in West Java, Indonesia. “I ‘hunted’ guava, coconut, turmeric, cayenne pepper, everything. I could find all that I needed in my parent’s backyard.” Sundanese people in Nissa’s village consider their homes not only a place to rest and take shelter, but also a means to provide them food and make a living. Nissa’s idyllic memories of her Garut childhood speak to the deep roots of family farming in rural Indonesian life. But her struggles to maintain those traditions against political adversity and poverty are illustrative of the threats family farmers have faced across Indonesia. Searching for solutions Nissa was a high school student in 1989 when she first realized that her family’s livelihood—and that of other farmers in Garut—was threatened. She joined a student movement to protect the rights of local farmers and resist the government’s policy of land acquisition. Eventually, the struggle yielded results. “Finally, in 1997, around 700 farmers got their land back,” she said. The following year, Nissa and her friends established the “Pasundan Farmer Union”. The organization became one of the most influential farmers’ organizations in West Java, and today it has more than 100 000 members. Getting their land back was the first step, but it didn’t protect farmers from the ravages of poverty. Nissa experienced the desperation firsthand when she lived with a farming community at the foot of the Papandayan mountain in West Java.  Farmers planted vegetables based on orders from intermediaries who controlled the city’s central market. These intermediaries provided farmers with seeds, agrochemical fertilizers and vitamins. They also encouraged farmers to move towards monoculture to reach their production targets. The high costs of the inputs increased the farmers’ dependency on the intermediaries, and when the price of vegetables dropped, farmers were left with little means of subsistence.   Not an ordinary school Nissa decided to find a way to empower the farmers, decrease their dependency on intermediaries and rekindle the experience of living close to nature. But the only way farmers and their children would regain confidence in their traditional wisdom, Nissa reasoned, was through education. In 2008, Nissa and her husband established a farmer field school called At-Thariq (meaning “the way” in Arabic) to teach agroecology, food security and religion to young people. Students also enrolled in traditional schools for formal education. Students sleep and eat at the school. They also receive sustainable farming lessons, learning mainly by doing. On only one hectare of land, Nissa designed a planting system based on intercropping, where various crops are cultivated simultaneously in the same field. The planting area is divided into several zones: a zone for tropical fruits, a fishpond in another zone and a staple food zone where they grow cassava and taro. The school also grows a variety of vegetables such as tomatoes, water spinach and herbs. Activities begin at 4 a.m. with morning prayers. After that, the high school students prepare for school, while the college seniors prepare food for breakfast and lunch and harvest the vegetables, fruit and fish that would be needed for dinner. In the afternoon, the elementary students tend the farm. In the evening, they learn more about agriculture and on the weekend, they spend all day on the farm. The school only admits 30 pupils because the farm can only feed 30 people. “Students must eat from the farms that they manage. This is one of our main lessons,” explains Nissa. Close to home Nunung Nurhasana spent five years at At-Thariq during high school and college. After graduating from the college of education in Garut, she returned to her village. Armed with her studies and experience from At-Thariq, Nunung applied the ideas that she learned. Nunung’s village produces a variety of fruits such as bananas, papayas and coconuts. She and the women farmers in her village process the leftover fruit into snacks and beverages, which she then promotes and sells on social media. Nunung says she spends very little on meals because, “I have everything I need in my family’s backyard.” At-Thariq has more than 1 000 alumni. Most, like Nunung, stay in their village and apply the lessons they learned.  Family farming “Nissa’s journey offers some solutions to many of the challenges facing us in our efforts to create more sustainable and resilient food systems,” says Pierre Ferrand, FAO’s focal point for family farming in the Asia Pacific region.  “Family farmers must be at the heart of agricultural transformation.” Family farming preserves traditional food products, contributes to a balanced diet, uses natural resources sustainably and safeguards the world’s biodiversity. Through its Family Farming Initiative as part of the Decade of Family Farming, FAO encourages living examples, like Nissa’s, of the values and lifestyles that concretely help the world attain a more sustainable future. The seeds of agricultural transformation that Nissa planted 12 years ago have started to bear fruits. And it all started in her backyard.