AJAR enhances young human rights defenders' knowledge and practice of peacebuilding and transitional justice all across Indonesia especially within the provinces of Aceh, North Sumatra, North Sulawesi, Central Sulawesi, Maluku and across Papua. AJAR also focused on developing training manuals on human rights, peacebuilding and transitional justice for young human rights defenders.

Springing from AJAR’s Community Learning Centre program initiated in 2020, youth participants from three refugee camps formed Uma Da Paz (Timor-Leste’s Tetun language, ‘House of Peace’). Uma is a learning community focusing on the experiences of refugees, a place to develop political education and deepen understanding of human rights, and strengthen capacities of young people, including agriculture. In Naibonat, several community garden plots are managed by camp youth; while in Noelbaki, vegetables are planted collectively and at harvest distributed to the camp residents.

Uma facilitates exchanges between camps and along the border, and organised community exhibitions. A participant reflected, “This was my first opportunity to get to know my ex-East Timor friends. Up till now, I only knew them as troublemakers, but through the exhibition I got to know my friends as complete human beings.”

A camp resident and member of Uma Da Pa*z stated: “No one deserves to suffer injustice. We, citizens of former East Timor, feel that we have not received our rights as Indonesian citizens. We have identify cards that show that we are part of Indonesia, but often we are still called or known as ‘refugees’. We have not yet received the right to be recognised as part of Indonesia. Rights that cannot be obtained are wounds that do not heal. But unobtainable rights are not the end of everything. It’s not a reason to give up and it’s not an obstacle to growing.”*

Find out more, here: https://asia-ajar.org/who-we-work-with/change-makers/