The book by a lecturer at the Faculty of Law, Universitas Indonesia (FLUI), Dr. Lidwina Inge Nurtjahyo, with Anthropology Researcher, Faculty of Social and Political Sciences (FSPS ) UI, M. Arief Wicaksono, entitled “Gender-Based Violence in South-East Asia” published by international book publisher Springer Link –a publishing platform that provides easy access topeer-previewed journal articles, e-books, and other resources, primarily in the scientific, technical, and medical fields. The book reviews the multidisciplinary perspective of a collection of works by authors from anthropological, legal, and gender backgrounds.
Several of the authors in the book were members of the initial research team for the Higher Education Basic Research Program, namely, Dr. Lidwina Inge Nurtjahyo, M. Arief Wicaksono, Anastasia Cindy, and Patricia B. Kurnia who conducted field research results in five Southeast Asian countries. Apart from Dr. Lidwina, there are two FLUI lecturers who contributed to writing articles in this book, namely Dr. Patricia Rinwigati with an article entitled “Defining Rape in Indonesia: A Never-Ending Struggle” and Nathalina Naibaho with Yosefin Mulyaningtyas with an article entitled “Victim Protection of Multiple Victimization of Violence in Indonesia: A Right Way to Go?”.
The book presents new research on gender-based violence in Southeast Asia that brings together a wide range of scholarly work in the fields of law, policy and practice. A greater understanding of violence against women as an international concern, highlights certain issues that are emerging in the region.
In addition, this book is motivated by international obligations to ensure women’s rights through laws and policies aimed at ending violence against women and girls. This research documents state failures, shame, individual fears, and societal culture that collectively influence reporting, investigation, prosecution of perpetrators, and protection of victims.
“The issue of gender-based violence in this book does not only focus on sexual issues. However, the contents of this book are more deeply related to the cultural construction that places women and girls in spaces in society with often detrimental biases. Not only women and girls but also men and boys. Starting from, how are women victims of violence in the eyes of the state, forms of discrimination in military institutions, gender-based violence on campus, and gender-based violence against the body,” said Dr. Lidwina.
He said that this book contains various practices of gender-based violence and the strategies of the state or society in defending and even resisting. Dr. Lidwina said that this book was contributed by Professor Felicity Gerry QC, an academic and international lawyer with experience in handling human rights cases, including genocide, war crimes, terrorism, torture, murder, biosecurity, illegal logging, modern slavery, human trafficking and other major domestic and international crimes, as well as paying attention to cases of gender-based violence, especially structural violence.
Academically, this book serves to disseminate the results of research for three years in order to describe the steps that need to be taken by the State related to handling gender-based violence. On the other hand, practically, this book is expected to be able to contribute in opening up insights for formulating policies based on good practices in several countries that are the subject of the study, namely Timor Leste, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia.
“I hope that this book can contribute to a comparative study of good practices in handling gender-based violence based on state policies. This comparative study is a reflection material for Indonesia in formulating policies and building collaborations in good practices for preventing and handling gender-based violence in Indonesia,” said Dr. Lidwina on Saturday (25/06).
The Dean of FLUI, Dr. Edmon Makarim, expressed his special appreciation to Dr. Lidwina and FLUI Lecturers that are involved in publishing this international book. He hopes that the publication of this book can trigger other lecturers to continue to increase international publications in the field of law, including in the form of journal articles.
