The objectives of the PBI Indonesia Project are:

• To help maintain a peaceful space for civil society to operate and grow;
• To model nonviolence and to promote nonviolent resolution of conflicts;
• To foster social and political dialogue and reconciliation;
• To empower civil society in all of the above activities, so as to reduce and eventually end the need for a PBI presence.

PBI responds to invitations from Indonesian civil society organisations working in conflict zones.

PBI is located in Jayapura and Wamena in Papua and in the capital city Jakarta, on the island of Java. Our work focuses on these three main areas:

Positive Peace Building (PPB)

Positive Peace building describes the activities that strive to achieve a society that is not only free from war (negative peace) but in which social justice and human rights prevail (positive peace). Positive Peace building is not only timely in a post-conflict situation but at any time - preventing the outbreak of violence, laying the ground for a lasting and sustainable peace agreement during violent conflict as well as re-building a just society after the outbreak of conflict.

Protective Services (PS)

Protective Services are a core strategy of positive peace building for the PBI Indonesia Project. Protective Services not only include physical accompaniment of human rights defenders at their office, at their homes or on field trips. Protective Services describe any activity that protects and encourages local human rights defenders to stay active and committed to building a more just society (positive peace). Check-in calls over the phone are one way of creating space for them by letting possible aggressors know that PBI, and with it, the international community, is present and concerned.

Participatory Peace Education (PPE)

Participatory Peace Education is another core strategy of positive peace building for the PBI Indonesia Project. Participatory Peace Education teams work together with local people to develop community peacebuilding activities that include, for example workshops or  developing activities for the International Day of Peace. The methodology and core values of this work is based on the
experience and work of John Paul Lederach amongst others. People and their
everyday understandings and experiences are seen as the key resource in a
community and this knowledge is valued and trusted.  PBI in this context
provides a safe space for  people to recognise, reflect upon and develop and share their own unique approaches to conflict to conflict situations in
their daily lives, their community and society at large. PBI works from a
perspective which recognises the strengths and capacities for peace in
communities and incorporates principles of adult learning and popular
education. A workshop with a focus on conflict resolution may have extensive
parts in which the local wisdom and local strategies for mediation and
conflict resolution is explored and unravelled and the participants build
their own models for working in their own communities and which are highly
valued.