Challenges for Peace in the Pacific Region: The Need for Humanitarian Pause and Peace Dialogue in West Papua

Abstract

Almost all of Indonesia's peace policies to resolve the Papuan conflict, including Special Autonomy for Papua, provincial expansion, accelerated development, and law enforcement operations, have never succeeded in bringing peace. The approaches that have not been taken are the humanitarian pause and dialog with the Papuan independence political movement. Dialogue would not kill anyone; it is an arena for conflicting parties to transform violent methods into negotiations mediated by a third party. Studies on the causes of the Papuan conflict have been conducted from various dimensions, such as the history of integration, political violence, and the development and marginalization of indigenous Papuans. However, few have advanced the idea of the main challenges in promoting the peace process, namely the humanitarian pause and the Jakarta-Papua dialog. This article aims to recount the development of violent conflict in the Land of Papua in the last five years and the ongoing humanitarian crisis among indigenous Papuans. The author argues that violent conflict in the Land of Papua will continue because the security approach has resulted in a cycle of political violence. Therefore, a humanitarian pause is needed to overcome the ongoing humanitarian crisis and the need for a Jakarta-Papua dialog to find a framework for West Papua's integration within the Indonesian state. This article discusses the challenges of peace in the Pacific Region from the perspective of indigenous Papuans. Also, this article describes the humanitarian pause and dialogue campaign via social media.