Walking to Kiwi, Pegunungan Bintang regency, West Papua, on 16 September 2021 the village was attacked by air by Indonesian forces destroying and damaging many houses and public buildings including a clinic and church. People from the village fled into the surrounding jungles, Photo: Sean Hawckey/WCC
The event will consider the policies of the new Indonesian administration on human rights in Indonesia, with a focus on the human rights situation of the Indigenous peoples in West Papua.
The gathering will bring together Indigenous Papuan human rights defenders and researchers to give an overview of the human rights situation one year into the mandate of the new administration.
Amplifying Indigenous Voices and Exposing an Alarming Authoritarian Drift
The side event, co-organised by the World Council of Churches and Franciscans International, and supported by several international human rights organisations, comes at a critical time in Indonesia's democratic trajectory. Just one year after President Prabowo Subianto took office in October 2024, the country has witnessed alarming signs of democratic backsliding and a deteriorating human rights climate.
Widespread protests over austerity measures and political corruption have been met with heavy-handed crackdowns. At least 3,000 cases of arbitrary arrest during peaceful demonstrations have been reported, with confirmed deaths and injuries raising serious concerns about police brutality and impunity.
In West Papua, the situation is even more dire. Over 100,000 Indigenous Papuans are currently internally displaced, facing severe shortages of healthcare, food, clean water, and access to education. Despite urgent humanitarian needs, the Indonesian government continues to block international aid from reaching affected communities.
The event seeks not only to document these violations but also to place the spotlight on the long-standing structural injustices faced by Indigenous Papuans. The lack of legal recognition under Indonesian law, including the decade-long failure to pass the Indigenous Peoples Bill (RUU Masyarakat Adat), leaves communities vulnerable to eviction, environmental destruction, and systemic marginalisation..
As the Human Rights Council enters its 60th session, the event will serve as a vital platform for holding the Indonesian government accountable and amplifying calls for justice, dignity, and peace in Indonesia and West Papua.
Event Details
Title: Human Rights in Indonesia – One Year into the New Administration
Date: 22 September 2025
Time: 13:00–14:00 CEST
Location: Room VII, Palais des Nations, Geneva
Organisers: World Council of Churches, Franciscans International
Watch the event live here
West Papuans fleeing into the forest during an Indonesian military operation in Pucak Jaya, West Papua, in August. They are carrying an Indonesian flag to avoid being killed. Source: Veronica Koman/X
The arrival of United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres in Port Moresby on September 2 marked the first official visit by a UN chief to Papua New Guinea, a moment of historic significance.
Grand Chief Bob Dadae warmly welcomed him, praising PNG’s achievements in peacebuilding and democracy as the country nears its 50th anniversary of independence.
Beneath this historic visit and the diplomatic celebration lay a deeper story — one that exposes the UN’s double face in Melanesia. On one side stands Bougainville, where dialogue and international support birthed a fragile but real peace. On the other side lies West Papua, where the same institution abandoned an entire people to silence, militarisation and slow extinction.
Bougainville: The long road to peace
The centrepiece of Guterres’ visit was a peace and reconciliation ceremony with the Autonomous Province of Bougainville — a milestone reflecting decades of dialogue after a brutal civil war that claimed more than 20,000 lives.
In 2019, more than 98% of Bougainvilleans voted for independence in a referendum. While non-binding, this overwhelming result built on years of patient negotiation between the PNG government and the Autonomous Bougainville Government, supported by international mediators, including Jerry Mateparae, Aotearoa New Zealand’s former governor general.
The UN played a decisive role: funding local initiatives; guaranteeing transparent elections; supervising weapons disposal; and building the administrative capacity for Bougainville’s transition toward independence, now targeted for 2027. In Bougainville, the UN lived up to its creed. Dialogue replaced violence. Trust took root where hatred had burned. The voices of the people were honoured.
Bougainville stands as proof of what is possible when justice is not delayed.
West Papua: A nation betrayed
Across PNG’s western border, West Papua tells a starkly different story. West Papua — once promised freedom — has been betrayed and condemned to silent death.
The betrayal began in 1969 with the so-called “Act of Free Choice”. About 1000 men and women, handpicked by Indonesia, were forced under the gaze of armed soldiers to “choose” integration with Indonesia. The UN, though present, closed its eyes. It blessed a fraud that mocked every principle of self-determination written in its own charter.
Since then, West Papua has endured militarised occupation, systematic human rights abuses and widespread displacement and replacement of Indigenous communities.
Calls for UN special rapporteurs and independent observers have gone unanswered for decades, while Jakarta tightly restricts international access to the territory. Unlike Bougainville, where international mediation created pathways to peace, West Papua remains trapped in cycles of violence and enforced silence.
The international community has not remained passive. More than 110 countries have now demanded that the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights be allowed to visit West Papua. This groundswell includes support from the Pacific Islands Forum, the Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States and the European Commission. Despite this unprecedented pressure, Indonesia continues to block access, directly defying international demands.
West Papuans remain grateful for Pacific solidarity, yet Jakarta’s intransigence undermines the credibility of regional diplomacy itself, exposing how Indonesia holds the entire Pacific Islands Forum hostage to its domestic agenda.
The UN’s original failure
To understand today’s crisis, we must confront the UN’s original failure. In the early 1960s, West Papua was formally listed in the UN decolonisation list as a non-self-governing territory with recognised rights to eventual independence. But the 1962 New York Agreement, negotiated between the Netherlands and Indonesia without any Papuan representation, tragically buried that status.
Under this arrangement, the UN handed administrative control to Indonesia in 1963, paving the way for Indonesian military occupation. The promise of genuine self-determination in 1969 became a carefully orchestrated deception. Instead of challenging this fraud, the UN legitimised an outcome born of coercion and fear.
For Papuans, this remains the moment of ultimate betrayal: when the very institution created to protect their rights instead sanctioned their subjugation.
Rather than adopting PNG’s collaborative peace-building approach, Indonesia has systematically worked to shield West Papua from international scrutiny. At the 46th ASEAN Summit in May, Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto proposed full ASEAN membership for PNG.
While framed as regional integration, this initiative serves Jakarta’s strategic interests. Embedding PNG within ASEAN’s principle of “non-interference” strengthens Indonesia’s narrative that West Papua is purely a domestic matter, deflecting pressure for international oversight or a final UN-supervised resolution to restore West Papuans’ sovereignty.
Bougainville and West Papua represent two fundamentally different approaches to Indigenous struggles for self-determination. Bougainville proves that peaceful resolution is achievable when governments negotiate in good faith, international actors provide credible oversight and local voices are genuinely heard and respected.
West Papua illustrates the devastating alternative: militarisation, systematic exclusion and the denial of basic human dignity. Its continuing tragedy represents not failed peacebuilding, but deliberately unfinished decolonisation.
The UN’s unfinished business
The UN cannot celebrate Bougainville’s success while wilfully ignoring West Papua’s suffering. Its catastrophic failure in 1969 created unresolved political and humanitarian consequences that continue to push West Papuans into the brink of extinction.
The path to redemption requires concrete action: dispatching fact-finding missions to document the truth; deploying human rights monitors to protect Papuans; and creating conditions for peaceful, internationally credible resolution of this longstanding, neglected genocide.
Guterres’ historic visit to PNG demonstrated the UN at its transformative best — helping convert Bougainville’s devastating conflict into a viable path toward independence. But West Papua remains the organisation’s most shameful unfinished business, a betrayal that corrodes UN credibility throughout the Pacific region.
Guterres now faces a defining choice. If Bougainville is remembered as a triumph of international peacebuilding, West Papua risks being forever marked as the UN's greatest moral failure — unless decisive action is taken to ensure West Papuans’ survival.
History will ultimately judge whether this historic moment becomes a catalyst for long-overdue justice or merely another ceremonial gesture while Indigenous Papuans on the western side of PNG’s border face extinction.
[Ali Mirin is a West Papuan academic and writer from the Kimyal tribe of the highlands bordering the Star Mountain region of Papua New Guinea. He holds a Master of Arts in International Relations from Flinders University in Adelaide, South Australia.]
Anthony Albanese has been asked point blank if Australians are “willing to die defending another country” as he prepares to ink a historic mutual defence pact with Papua New Guinea.
The treaty is reportedly legally binding and compels Australia and PNG to defend each other if either is attacked.
It also gives the Australian Defence Force more freedom to operate on PNG’s territory.
Speaking to media in Port Moresby on Tuesday, the Prime Minister said it was unrealistic that Australia “would sit back and watch” if Papua New Guinea was attacked.
“The idea that Papua New Guinea could be under attack and we would sit back and watch ignores the history which is there between our two great nations,” Mr Albanese told reporters.
“Ignores geography and ignores practical issues as well.”
He called Australia’s northern neighbour a “great democracy” and said the treaty “is about advancing the sovereignty and security of both of our nations”.
Indonesia ‘consulted’
Mr Albanese earlier played down concerns that Indonesia might be unhappy with the arrangement.
While PNG officially recognises Indonesia’s sovereignty over West Papua, skirmishes occasionally break out between pro-independence militia and Indonesian troops along the 820km border.
There is also some political support for the West Papuan independence movement within PNG.
During a morning show blitz, Mr Albanese was asked what Australia would do “if PNG is in a stink with Indonesia”.
“Indonesia has of course been consulted on this,” he told Nine’s Today.
“And you know, PNG and Indonesia have a good relationship – the vice-president of Indonesia is here.”
Mr Albanese also said Australia’s relationship with Indonesia “is strong”.
“We recognise Indonesia’s sovereignty and Papua New Guinea’s sovereignty as well,” he said.
‘Mutual respect’
The treaty, which has been years in the making, is set to be signed on Wednesday – a day after the 50th anniversary of PNG’s independence from Australia.
In a statement marking the anniversary, Mr Albanese announced that Australia would build a new ministerial wing for PNG’s parliament, saying the “gift recognises our common understanding of the democratic principles that underpin the modern Australia-PNG relationship and the role of our parliaments in reflecting the voices of our people”.
“Our support for the expansion of Parliament House is an investment in Papua New Guinea’s democracy and sovereignty that will benefit future generations,” Mr Albanese said.
“At a ceremony held in Port Moresby on the day of independence in 1975, Australia’s then prime minister Gough Whitlam observed ours is ‘a relationship of equals, based on mutual respect, understanding and trust’.
“As close neighbours and warm friends, the future prosperity of our two nations are bound together.”
The Albanese government has kept mum on the details of the deal, publicly acknowledging bits and pieces.
PNG’s government has not been so tight-lipped.
Citing a copy of the treaty included in a submission to PNG’s national cabinet, the ABC reported it declared an attack on either Australia or PNG “dangerous to the other’s peace and security” and promised to “act to meet the common danger”.
“The treaty is meant to prepare our militaries to be battle-ready and for a very bad day,” the submission is reported to have said.
“It has the ability to bite and like a crocodile, its bite force speaks of the interoperability’s and preparedness of the military for war.”
‘War’
Talk of war has spiked in recent years as Western governments, including Australia, hawkishly watch China’s rapidly military build-up and ever-expanding economic might.
The Trump administration has warned that China could make a move on Taiwan as early as 2027 – a view taken seriously in Canberra, according to government sources.
And yet the Albanese government has pushed back on a demand from Washington to hike defence spending to 3.5 per cent of GDP, arguing it must first determine what capabilities Australia needs rather than set a target.
The Coalition rejects that argument.
Opposition defence spokesman Angus Taylor accused Labor of “underfunding our defence force at a critical time”.
“The Chinese Communist Party is seeking to extend its influence across the South Pacific,” Mr Taylor told Today.
“We saw it on parade only a short a few days ago.”
He went on to say Australia needs “broader defence investments” than just nuclear-powered submarines under AUKUS.
“The objective here isn’t war,” Mr Taylor said.
“It’s peace. It’s deterrence.”
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