How Indonesia's water conferences went down the drain

“Let’s go home with patience, Balinese wisdom about water, and a positive agenda,” said Éric Tardieu, vice president of the World Water Council, as he closed out the 10th World Water Forum in Bali, Indonesia, last month. Such positivity might have been hard to muster for those planning to attend WWF and a separate counter-conference led by a civil society called the People’s Water Forum, which was shut down by a pro-government paramilitary group as part of — attendees claim — a continued crackdown on freedom of expression in Indonesia and likely because of the forum’s anti-water privatization stance. The Patriot Garuda Nusantara blockaded PWF attendees in their hotel for three days and intimidated and threatened others. Reports describe dozens of men storming the event venue, forcibly removing posters, and shoving attendees. “We are being witnesses to the closing of spaces for civil society participation,” said Nathalie Seguin, global coordinator at End Water Poverty, which is a part of the PWF committee. “It is impossible to reduce the billions of people lacking access to water and sanitation if we are not able to listen to the people that are actually lacking those human rights.” PWF and WWF are dueling events that reflect different visions for how to solve the world’s water crisis. PWF, previously called the Alternative World Water Forum, is a global civil society forum convened by human rights activists and water justice movements to champion public and community water access. It’s held at the same time as the triennial WWF, which takes place in a different country for each event, to oppose what it believes is WWF’s “corporate-driven agenda” and water privatization push. WWF, organized by the World Water Council and a government co-host — this year the Indonesian government — convenes heads of state, business leaders, economists, nonprofits, multilateral institutions, and others to discuss the greatest water challenges. Seguin believes the national government’s influence on WWF this year led to local government interference; something Bali’s acting governor, Sang Made Mahendra Jaya, has denied. “For me, it was very clear that they were just trying to avoid having different views from the reality that is being lived in Indonesia because Indonesia has 35 million people lacking access to water and sanitation,” Seguin said. In the popular holiday destination of Bali, for example, natural freshwater aquifers are at record lows while continued development of tourist infrastructure is leaving the idyllic destination with a water crisis. This is affecting locals the most, including farmers whose depleted yields from a lack of rain are putting food security in jeopardy. The number of tourists in 2023 grew by around 3 million compared to 2022. Meanwhile, some 2.2 billion people worldwide lack access to clean water and most funding appeals go unmet. Private sector financing and the financialization of the water, sanitation, and hygiene, or WASH, space is a hot-button topic, said Barbara Schreiner, executive director of the Water Integrity Network, with many opposed to it. Research shows privatizing water can make it unaffordable and unsustainable, with the potential to lead to corruption and the deterioration of services. “It is impossible to reduce the billions of people lacking access to water and sanitation if we are not able to listen to the people that are actually lacking those human rights.” --— Nathalie Seguin, global coordinator, End Water Poverty Still, Schreiner, who planned to attend both events, didn’t feel WWF was overly privatization-focused, describing an agenda of technical discussions with a multitude of high-level representatives, while PWF was cheaper to attend and focused on grassroots movements. Both events have taken place simultaneously for over two decades without issue. But this year, the week was fraught with controversy that culminated in the closure of PWF. “The event turned to a disaster as a mass organization, namely Patriot Garuda Nusantara, did repressive acts to both participants and committees of PWF,” said the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation and the Commission for the Disappeared and Victims of Violence, or KontraS, in a joint statement. The Patriot Garuda Nusantara is one of several civilian-led, pro-government security forces that claim to focus on maintaining peace and protecting national interests. A spokesperson told the local press it had been motivated to act by its love for Bali and wanted to prevent any disruption to WWF. But the group has a reputation for violence and doing the government’s “dirty work,” said Nadine Sherani, head of the international advocacy division at KontraS. The various groups consider any critical counter-narratives in the country, like that against water privatization, as tarnishing Bali’s image and thus against national interest. It has become normal, Sherani said, for groups like the Patriot Garuda Nusantara, which is thought to have some 380,000 members nationwide, to attack civil sector organizations. “[The state is] hiding behind mass organizations with mass organizations doing the so-called dirty work to forcibly disperse forums,” Sherani said, adding that in the case of PWF, the local authorities never wanted the event to go ahead. Prior to last month’s planned event, Bali’s acting governor, Mahendra, appealed for WWF to be a success. A Patriot Garuda Nusantara spokesperson initially told local media that it was enacting the governor’s appeal but later denied being influenced by Mahendra, who himself said he’d never heard of the group. When organizers continued with the event, the original venue canceled bookings and intelligence officers visited local coordinators' homes. “Then some of the organizing committee were attacked online, their WhatsApp numbers hijacked a couple of times,” Muhammad Reza Sahib, a PWF organizer and national coordinator of Indonesian water rights NGO KRuHA, told Devex. “We never expected something like this because we only talk about water,” Sahib said. But organizers pushed ahead because some 150 people had already booked travel. Then, the day before the event, medical-masked members of the Patriot Garuda Nusantara “violently interrupted” a PWF press conference at the Indonesian Institute for the Arts, according to United Nations independent experts. They confiscated posters, pushed attendees, and issued threats, while about 50 men, many dressed in traditional Balinese sarongs, gathered outside the nearby Hotel Oranjje to prevent guests from attending the conference or accessing food and water. Although unarmed, reports state that when some 40 water activists attempted to leave, they were blocked from doing so. Local police stationed outside did not intervene. “We had people watching us and listening to some conversations,” said Seguin. “We also had some banners outside the hotel saying: ‘PWF, get out of here.’” Pedro Arrojo-Agudo, the U.N. special rapporteur on the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation, visited the hotel and attempted to intervene, but footage shows him being refused entry and escorted off the premises by police. “The fact that the group was able to storm the hotel and hold activists hostage, with the acquiescence of the police stationed outside the hotel, as the Special Rapporteur on safe drinking water and sanitation witnessed in person, lends particular gravity to the events,” U.N. experts said. The event was unable to go on. “This is the first time in more than 20 years of having the WWF that the alternative was canceled. It has always existed. It's an important space for civil society,” said Seguin. The three-day event was scheduled to host sessions on human rights to water, how to strengthen people’s movements, and how to build solidarity through water justice. Instead, most panels were canceled, with some compressed into a single day and others hosted online. End Water Poverty and Redes del Agua were due to present policy briefs at PWF but were unable to do so. The government-coordinated WWF event meanwhile continued, producing a new ministerial declaration on water for shared prosperity, adopting Indonesia's proposal for a World Lakes Day, and establishing a Center of Excellence on Water and Climate Resilience in Indonesia. WWF did not respond to a request for comment. A wider civil society crackdown The shutdown of PWF is very much in keeping with Indonesia’s broader attacks on civil society, said Sherani. In March, Indonesia received the concluding observation of the U.N. International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, where the committee highlighted “significant reports of harassment, intimidation, surveillance, and the excessive use of force by peaceful protesters and members of civil society.” The country also introduced a new criminal code in 2022, to come into effect in three years, that will make it illegal to insult government institutions, the president, or vice president. Indonesian Minister of Public Works and Public Housing Basuki Hadimuljono was co-host of WWF. Freedom House only classifies Indonesia as “partly” free when it comes to civil liberties. NGOs must submit information on their activities for regular review by authorities and protests are frequently dispersed. In 2018, a civil society conference on the sidelines of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank's annual meeting was canceled following police pressure. In November 2022, authorities disbanded the activities of civil society groups and harassed their organizers in Bali ahead of the G20 Summit. While some of the shutdowns are led by security forces, others involve paramilitary groups. KontraS found that between 2020 and 2024, there were 19 documented cases involving non-police forces. Such groups have been engaged by the state to stamp out perceived misconduct in the country. Schreiner believes the government didn’t favor the idea of local civil society groups engaging with a bigger global network like PWF. “But if we’re going to manage our water and sanitation effectively there has to be the space for civil society to engage, there has to be space for dissent, there has to be space for people to express their views,” she said, adding that WWF should advocate for the right of everyone to meet and engage around issues that affect them. KontraS called on the police to take legal action against those who violently intimidated water defenders and for the international community to encourage Indonesia's government to ensure the inclusion of civil society in promoting and upholding human rights. In terms of the two water conferences, Schreiner said she would like to see “more cross-pollination” between the grassroots-oriented PWF and higher-level WWF. Despite PWF acting as a counter event to WWF, both are centered on improving water access globally. “I would like to see tougher discussions happening between the people who are promoting privatization and private sector funding as a way of solving problems with the water sector with the people on the ground opposed to those issues,” she said.