By Madinatul Fajar — Human rights advocate based in the United States, focusing on environmental justice and civil rights in Acheh.

Petition: Stop the Neglect — Acheh and Sumatra Need Emergency Aid Now

The floods that swept through Acheh, North Sumatra, and West Sumatra in late November 2025 were not just another natural disaster. Triggered by Cyclone Senyar, the devastation displaced more than a million people, killed hundreds, and shattered entire districts as roads collapsed and critical infrastructure failed. But beyond the immediate tragedy, the disaster exposed a deeper, more unsettling truth: twenty years after the 2005 Helsinki Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), Acheh remains profoundly vulnerable—not only to extreme weather, but to the structural weaknesses of a peace that has never been able to protect its people.

As the world observes Human Rights Day, the Senyar floods force a difficult but necessary question: what does peace mean when communities remain unprotected from foreseeable harm? The events of 2025 demand a re-examination of the institutional landscape that has shaped Acheh since the end of armed conflict. The water receded, but what it revealed was a fragile governance architecture incapable of responding to environmental crises with the urgency or capacity the region requires.

To understand the weight of this failure, it helps to look back at the radically different conditions of 2004, when the Indian Ocean tsunami struck Acheh under martial law. Independent organizations faced surveillance, harassment, and severe movement restrictions, yet Acheh’s informal civic networks—village leaders, mosque communities, women’s groups, activists, and the diaspora channels—responded with extraordinary speed. Despite repression, these community-driven structures became lifelines, transmitting information, organizing relief, and ultimately helping generate the pressure that forced Jakarta to open Acheh to international assistance. Scholars such as Edward Aspinall and institutions like the International Crisis Group note this moment as pivotal in reshaping Acheh’s political trajectory.

The contrast with 2025 is striking. The post-Helsinki era delivered meaningful gains, including the end of armed conflict and the establishment of local political institutions. But beneath this stability, structural constraints embedded within the settlement have remained unresolved. Acheh’s authority over crucial sectors—forestry, mining, land use, and environmental regulation—continues to be held by national ministries, limiting Acheh’s ability to mitigate risk or enforce protections. Civil society, once energized by necessity and rooted in grassroots networks, has become fragmented as former activists entered political office and donor-driven NGO models shifted focus toward technical professionalism rather than mass mobilization. These developments unfolded as civic space across Indonesia contracted, affecting Acheh’s capacity for independent advocacy.

These political limitations collided with a worsening environmental landscape long before Cyclone Senyar appeared. Independent assessments from WALHI, Greenpeace Indonesia, and Forest Watch Indonesia document extensive deforestation across northern Sumatra due to plantation expansion, mining concessions, and illegal logging. Between 2016 and 2024, more than a million hectares of forest cover were lost, stripping the region of natural protections that stabilize slopes, manage rainfall, and reduce sedimentation. When Senyar formed—an anomalous system linked to warming ocean temperatures highlighted by BMKG—the scale of devastation was shaped as much by governance failures as by climate-driven extremes.

During the floods, Achehnese volunteers, NGOs, and religious institutions mobilized rapidly, upholding a longstanding culture of communal solidarity. Yet their capacity to influence national-level decision-making was limited. Calls for a national disaster declaration, expanded humanitarian access, and clearer public communication went largely unanswered. Unlike the tsunami era, the Senyar floods drew minimal international attention, and despite appeals from organizations like Amnesty International, Jakarta’s policies remained largely unchanged. This muted impact underscores a central tension: Acheh is freer today than during martial law, but its civic capacity is weaker, less coordinated, and less able to challenge structural neglect.

This points to a broader human rights concern. Ending conflict is not enough. A peace agreement that does not equip communities with meaningful authority over land, natural resources, and disaster preparedness cannot safeguard their rights. The Helsinki MoU ended armed hostilities, but it did not create the institutional foundations required for long-term protection. Acheh remains structurally dependent on decisions made far from the communities most affected, and the consequences of that dependency became tragically visible in 2025.

The Senyar floods reveal not merely gaps in disaster response, but the limits of a peace framework that prioritized political settlement over structural empowerment. As the global community reflects on Human Rights Day, Acheh offers an urgent lesson: peace without sovereignty is fragile, and peace without protections is an illusion. The region’s recurrent vulnerability will persist until the deeper governance constraints at the heart of the settlement are confronted directly. True resilience demands more than the end of conflict—it requires authority, accountability, and a civic landscape capable of defending the rights and safety of the people it serves.