WAHID FOUNDATION DEVELOPS A PEACE VILLAGE ACTION PLAN TO ANSWER GLOBAL CHALLENGES

The Wahid Foundation has been working with UN Women to realize peace in society through the implementation of the Women Participation for Inclusive Society (WISE) - GUYUB program, which is a continuation program from WISE that started in 2017 and ended in the middle of 2019. The main target in the WISE-GUYUB program is to strengthen the implementation of Peace Villages by prioritizing a gender responsive community mechanism (women and men) to promote peaceful communities and gender justice.

 The strategy developed in the implementation of the WISE-GUYUB program is to establish four Peace Villages/Kelurahans in East Java, two of which are in Sumenep Regency, namely Prancak and Guluk-Guluk. These villages will be used as a laboratory for implementing the Peace Village Action Plan. This action plan is the product of  the application of nine indicators of Peace Villages/Kelurahans through consolidation at the provincial, district and village levels. It is necessary to review and evaluate the on-going implementation of the Peace Village Action Plan through focused discussions at the regency/city level as well as at the village level. "In general, there are several stages in the preparation of the Peace Village Action Plan. We must ensure that this process is completely participatory by involving the community, especially women's groups. This is one of the principles in the Human Security Approach (HSA) that is sometimes overlooked in the effort to create a peaceful society in order to prevent conflicts, intolerance, radicalism,” said Visna Vulovik, Assistant Director of the Wahid Foundation. This approach must be comprehensive because the Wahid Foundation also adheres to Gus Dur's principle, that being that peace without justice is an illusion.

The first step was the preparation of the Peace Village/Kelurahan Action Plan Guidelines. The formulation of the guidelines involved the central government, village/kelurahan governments and the Peace Village/Kelurahan Women's community. "To support the drafting process of the Peace Village Action Plan, we provided guidelines for the women's community to access justice. These guidelines are a manual for the community and working groups as part of the pro

motion of gender justice and the fulfillment of women's rights at the community level," said Visna Vulovik. These guidelines also refer to the nine Indicators of Peace Villages/Kelurahans, the foundations of a Peace Village/Kelurahan. In addition, the Wahid Foundation also provided monitoring and evaluation guidelines that refer to the protection mechanism for women and adolescents, so that they can protect their families and communities in relation to human rights issues, including how they protect themselves from crises, such as disasters, pandemics, conflicts, and radicalism.

The Peace Village governments were facilitated by holding village meetings, an activity that involved representatives from each village government, Peace Village Working Group, representatives of women's groups, religious leaders, community leaders, and youth leaders. In the Peace village deliberations, participants agreed on the Peace Village Action Plan. The plan will be implemented for one year. The action plan that will be integrated into the Village Government Work Plan as a derivative of the Village Long and Medium Term Plan. The plan will aid both villages in creating a gender responsive mechanism for the prevention of social conflicts, violent extremism and gender injustice.

It is hoped that the Peace Village Action Plan can be used as a pilot project for an integrated program model with a comprehensive Human Security Approach. The village, as the lowest social entity in the government structure, must be given full strengthening and support to implement conflict prevention programs as mandated by the National Action Plan for the Protection and Empowerment of Women and Children in Social Conflict; and to prevent community-based violent extremism that will later become part of the National Action Plan for Combating Violent Extremism.