On Tuesday, 28 June 2015, ARuPA held a project meeting about “Strengthening the Capacity of Forest-Surrounding Communities in Justice Monitoring” in ARuPA’s office at Sleman, Yogyakarta. The meeting was attended by ARuPA’s staff, representative of Law Faculty of Gajah Mada University, representative of Legal Aid Institutios from Semarang and Yogyakarta, and also representative of KPA from Central Java.

The project goal is for strengthening the position of forest communities who were criminalized by the government.

The background of the consolidation meeting is due to the injustice experienced by the local community, such as shootings, persecution, and arrest which out of the procedure. Furthermore, judicial proceedings was not transparent, and the practice of buying and selling cases.

There was discussed the way which will be pursued to achieve it. It was planned there are five ways: first, training for forest communities; Second, consolidation, establishment and declarations of environmental justice monitoring; Third, open dialogue and equate perspective on handling environmental cases with law enforcer; Fourth, organizing cadres, also monitoring post-training and environmental law cases; Fifth, managing knowledge and information through news, movies, and books about the process and substance of work which has been done.

The next month acitivty is carrying out a needs assessment to the stakeholders and all at once collecting the data about cases in the working area.