VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

United States Agency for International Development-USAID believes that civil society that represents citizens can assist in the process of policy formulation, service delivery and government oversight. The US government through USAID is honored to be able to contribute to the First Indonesian Civil Society Forum, which raised the theme 'Building Capacity to Ensure Sustainability', in Jakarta on Wednesday, (November 14). Expert Staff for Law and Democracy Reinforcement at the Ministry of Law and Human Rights, Haru Tamtomo, in his remarks said that the Indonesian and US governments have collaborated to create democratic governance through an agreement document dated 29 September 2014.

"The document of the cooperation agreement between the government of the Republic of Indonesia represented by the Ministry of Finance along with the Ministry of National Development Planning Agency and the United States government represented by USAID Indonesia was signed in the assistance agreement No. 497 on September 29, 2014. The cooperation agreement contains sebveral points; one of them is cooperation for pillars of DO or Development Objectives I, related to democratic government," Haru Tamtomo said,

Haru Tamtomo further said that although the terminology between civil society and mass organizations is often used simultaneously, actually the two terms are not the same, because Civil Society Organizations are defined as organized civil society and can take several forms, such as informal institutions without legal entities or formal institutions with legal entities. He said that at present, the number of mass organizations in Indonesia reaches 390,293 organizations or in a day there are around 50 to 100 new mass organizations formed and registered. A number of mass organizations have proven to contribute significantly to nation building starting from the colonial period to the present, such as Budi Oetomo, Islamic Law Society, Taman Siswa, Muhammadiyah, Nahdlatul Ulama, and Catholic Women of the Republic of Indonesia. (VOI/Viqran/AHM)