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Revisiting Indonesia’s development cooperation with the Pacific Islands: an alternative approach to old dilemmas

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For decades, the Pacific Islands have continued to be one of the key parts of Indonesia’s foreign policy. Indonesia has consistently acknowledged the importance of the Pacific region to Indonesia’s strategic interest through various diplomatic and foreign policy engagements, including development cooperation. In 2019, Indonesia introduced its Pacific Elevation, a vision aims at strengthening the relationship between Indonesia and the Pacific Islands by way of expanding and deepening connectivity in all layers of interaction. This vision highlights Indonesia’s shared cultural identity as the Pacific family and shared development challenges facing the region, such as the issue of climate change. Following the announcement, Indonesia has initiated a number of platforms to foster stronger relations with the Pacific. Indonesia redoubles its commitment to not only elevating Indonesia’s engagement with the Pacific, but also to voicing out the concerns of Pacific communities in wider forums such as G20 and ASEAN.

Since the mid-1980s, Indonesia has been proactive in providing development cooperation to the Pacific Island countries and territories. Since 1999 until 2022, Indonesia has provided more than 200 technical assistance programs in various fields involving more than 1900 participants from across the Pacific region. Moreover, since the establishment of Indonesian AID in 2019, Indonesia has provided significantly more development assistance to countries in the Pacific Islands.

Despite such policy engagements and development assistance, it is often argued that the Pacific Islands has yet to become a priority in Indonesia’s foreign policy. As a tool of foreign policy, Indonesia’s development cooperation in the Pacific region has also been questioned if it serves Indonesia’s foreign policy objectives.

This paper argues that development cooperation can be one of Indonesia’s most potent foreign policy tools in strengthening relations with the Pacific Islands if Indonesia place a greater focus on building stronger domestic support and meaningful connection with the Pacific. This paper revisits Indonesia’s development cooperation approach in the Pacific region and proposes policy recommendations on the role of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs with regard to sharpening a more strategic Indonesia’s development cooperation in the Pacific region, which could help better achieve Indonesia’s national interest in the region and providing a more impactful development assistance to the Pacific Islands region.

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Ketersediaan

2023-0081

Sesparlu 72-2023

Training Materials Repository

Tersedia

Informasi Detail

Judul Seri

-

No. Panggil

Sesparlu 72-2023

Penerbit

Jakarta : Kementerian Luar Negeri., 2023

Deskripsi Fisik

Digital File

Bahasa

English

ISBN/ISSN

-

Klasifikasi

NONE

Tipe Isi

text

Tipe Media

computer

Tipe Pembawa

online resource

Edisi

-

Subjek

-

Info Detail Spesifik

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Pernyataan Tanggungjawab

UPT Sekolah Staf dan Pimpinan Luar Negeri

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