Nukila Evanty

Nukila is currently the Country Director of Regional Initiatives for Governance, Human Rights and Social Justice Asia (RIGHTS), a regional initiative for governance, human rights and social justice with the goal to advocate, educate and facilitate so that people can be an active part of the development decision-making process. We work to centre the people in any development and bridge the gap between the people and the decision-making process. We lobby the decision makers on human rights issues. We are currently working on issues of palm oil plantations, land degradation, land grabbing and forest fires for local people and Indigenous people. We approach businesses on the situation of palm oil with the people residing by the plantation. We also approached the Council of Palm Oil Producer Countries and submitted our findings that some Indigenous peoples’ land has been taken and on the low wages of palm oil farmers.

“For me, working at the regional level, to work together is very important. I learned from DTP that we should make alliances, to support each other, especially in this current situation. We need more synergy.”

Nukila founded and is the Executive Director of Women Working Group (WWG), a movement that aims to achieve gender equality by working with stakeholders such as government ministries, international organisations and universities to educate women to know their rights in areas such as education, employment and health. We facilitate education and training to improve skills in small and medium enterprise. In this role I advocate to the Ministry of Information on online harassment and intimidation towards women who speak up online about their political opinions to facilitate the creation of guidelines for the protection of women online. The influence of patriarchal culture, discrimination, and a stigma against women as leaders remain the main challenges we are facing with WWG. There is still discriminatory policy in every sector, this is the challenge for women and for WWG.

In March 2020, Nukila founded and currently chairs the Civil Society Coalition Against Corona (In Bahasa Indonesian – Koalisi Lawan Corona) (KLC) with the goal of educating people of their rights during the pandemic and monitoring the related government policy and implementation. Gaining the trust of the people is an important achievement of KLC, in order to listen to them, help their mental health, calm their anger or frustration, and follow up with them. KLC is happy to do that. The organisation also approaches members of parliament who have power to change the policy, as well as the ombudsman.

Nukila’s work includes research, advocacy and capacity building for Indigenous Peoples in Riau province, and for marginalised, minorities and vulnerable groups in Indonesia. She represented Indonesia on the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues at the UN in New York in April this year. She is the 2021 Resilience Fellow for her outstanding advocacy on Indigenous peoples and crimes of extortion, and she received a grant from the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime for advocacy regarding the protection of female migrant workers against human trafficking in Indonesia. Nukila is always thankful for the knowledge and skills she gains from DTP training, which has strengthened her work and helped her lead human rights organisations.

“Human rights are indispensable. DTP empowered me to become more indispensable, to work for the outstanding issues on human rights. I am proud to be a human rights defender, and proud to be an alumna of DTP.”