Konferensi Perempuan Timur (‘Eastern Indonesia Women’s Conference’) Came Up with Recommendations to End Violence against Women

“Eastern Indonesia is blessed with abundant resources, cultures, and customs. The enormous wealth and potential must be balanced with empowered women. With collaboration between government, community organizations, business sector, and media, I’m convinced that we can empower women and encourage women entrepreneurs to keep innovating. We can also keep protecting women from stigma or stereotype disfavoring them”, said the Minister of Women Empowerment and Child Protection, I Gusti Ayu Bintang Darmawati, S.E, M.Si, in her opening remark at the Konferensi Perempuan Timur 2020 (KPT2020), 26 August 2020.

KPT2020 was held on 26-27 August 2020 upon the initiative of Yayasan BaKTI, Service Providers Forum (FPL), and National Commission on Violence against Women (Komnas Perempuan) with full support from MAMPU Program, an Australia – Indonesia Partnership for Gender Equality and Women Empowerment. Highlighting the theme of “Reaping the Fruit of Multi-Stakeholders Synergy for Equal Development in East Indonesia,” this conference was aimed at serving as a medium for sharing on collective actions and empowerment models used by women movement in Eastern Indonesia for sustainable development.

The minister further said, “I hope this conference would generate a lot of innovative ideas, thoughts and solutions so as to create the spirit and optimism that would result in emergence of more women leaders from the region. I’m convinced that Eastern Indonesian women are a force for the national development, toward empowered women and a developed Indonesia,” she continued.

During the two-day event, participants of KPT2020 shared lessons-learnt and experiences on various problems relating to violence against women, including best practices and multi-stakeholders synergy that were being or had been carried out at local to national level under several topics. The discussion on the various topics were summarized and developed as
recommendations from the conference. At the end of the event, KPT2020 managed to produce 11 recommendations to be followed-up by various stakeholders, particularly the Government of Indonesia, ensuring that all development gaps, including violence against women, can be eradicated in the eastern part of the country.

“This recommendation came up from the experiences and challenges faced by various stakeholders who had made some good initiatives to address violence against women in Eastern Indonesia,” explained Lusia Palulungan – Head of Joint Committee of KPT2020. “We summarized this multi-stakeholders ideas into recommendations that we will submit to the government to be followed-up, so that the initiative can be replicated in other areas,” she further added.

The KPT2020 recommendations were submitted by the KPT2020 Organizer in a symbolic ceremony to Komnas Perempuan, represented by Veryanto Sitohang (Komnas Perempuan’s Commissioner for 2020-2024) to be forwarded to the Ministry of Women Empowerment and Child Protection and Ministry of Home Affairs to keep up synergy with civil society organizations, media, universities, and other stakeholders who share concern and commitment to realize gender justice and equality. Recommendation points of KPT2020 can be accessed at https://bit.ly/MateriKPT20