Helping Civil Society Organizations in Indonesia Become More Involved in Regional Development

MANILA, PHILIPPINES (19 January 2004) - ADB has approved an innovative US$300,000 technical assistance (TA) grant to involve civil society organizations (CSOs) more deeply in Indonesia's regional development process.

The project is being co-financed with a $100,000 grant from the United Kingdom through the ADB/Department for International Development (DFID) Partnership for Innovation in Poverty Reduction.

The short-term goal of the TA is to develop a mechanism to fully integrate civil-society representatives as key regional players and stakeholders in ADB-assisted projects, while in the longer term it will enable CSOs to institutionalize their contributions to regional development.

As Indonesia continues to decentralize after decades of largely centralized decision-making, the role of CSOs in encouraging good governance in formulating policy and monitoring public sector activities at the regional and district levels is taking on new significance.

While ADB's Indonesia Resident Mission (IRM) has met regularly with its CSO working group, established in March 2001, there is a need to create regional working groups (RWGs) of CSOs to interact with local governments on development matters, initially relating to ADB projects.

"CSOs in Indonesia address a variety of needs," says Syahrul Luddin, ADB's Program Officer at IRM. "Some focus more on the advocacy of issues at a macro level such as debt reduction, governance, anti-corruption, labor and environment, while others work in specific sectors such as education, health and rural development. While some operate mainly in Jakarta, others have networks throughout the archipelago."

During ADB's consultations with regional civil-society representatives, CSOs requested the establishment of regional organizations similar to the Jakarta-based CSO working group.

The TA will establish three pilot RWGs, most likely in Yogyakarta, Bandung, and Medan, where ADB-CSO cooperation is already in place and where there are a number of ongoing ADB projects.

It will improve the ability of CSOs to contribute to the ADB project cycle from design to management, implementation, monitoring and evaluation.

The assistance will also help maintain a regional CSO database, and disseminate information on ADB policies, procedures and operations, as well as develop a geographic information system (GIS) to enable CSOs to know more about ADB projects in the pipeline.

The executing agency will be the Directorate General of Community and Rural Empowerment under the Ministry of Home Affairs.

Read the full TA report.