Justice Fellowship Spotlight - Irna advocating for disabled survivors of SV access to justice.

🌷 @irna.susrianti is a human rights defender from Aceh province of Indonesia. She works as the General Manager of a social enterprise that seeks to bring sustainability to coconut farming in Aceh. She also supports the work of the Communication Forum of Special Needs Community (CFSNC) and the Young Women Unit (YWU) organization working to protect the rights of women and disabled people in Aceh.

🌿 Women and people with disabilities represent a significant proportion of sexual violence survivors. Their rights are neither protected by women’s rights groups or organizations for differently-abled individuals.

🧩Fellowship outcomes & impact:

Irna has developed a set of standard operating procedures (SOP) that include provisions to improve access to justice for survivors of sexual violence. The provincial government in Aceh started a consultation with civil society members. Consultations at the district level are also in progress. She advocates for sexual violence survivors as well as their communities to be given the opportunity to participate in developing future SOPs that will improve access to justice. She also raised awareness of what good policy making in survivor-centered approaches look like amongst other women human rights defenders. She believes that disabled women’s experiences of sexual violence have to be included in broader policy discussions on access to justice.

📙Key learnings:

Through her interviews and work with victims and groups, Irna realized the need for practical procedures to be built into the justice process which are centered around survivors’ needs. This has to include referral procedures as victims often had legal needs on top of other needs such as medical and psychosocial support. At the government level, gender-based violence cases are typically managed by the women’s department. However, it is critical to involve other departments (police, health).