Ten years of peace,bravery and resilience in Aceh |
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| Authors: | Catherine Smith |
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| Institution: | Postdoctoral fellow at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore. She has a special interest in the relationship between medicine, the body and socio‐political change. Her doctoral research explored the ways that conflict survivors in Aceh, Indonesia, have taken up the globalized concept of trauma and incorporated it into everyday healing practices and political imaginaries. |
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| Abstract: | The date 15 August 2015 marks the 10th anniversary of the Helsinki Peace Agreement, which ended a major thirty‐year conflict between the Free Aceh Movement and the Government of Indonesia. In this article I argue that much greater acknowledgement should be given to the creative responses that ordinary conflict survivors have brought to the process of post‐conflict social recovery. The article briefly discusses some observations on resilience made through 17 months of ethnographic fieldwork with Acehnese conflict survivors. I conclude that while Acehnese resilience is impressive, there remains a need for greater recognition of the experiences of conflict survivors, both to support justice for survivors and to enable a deeper understanding of ongoing political complexities in Aceh. |
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