- – The EU–Indonesia Free Trade Agreement (FTA) effectively gives EU approval to the ongoing environmental destruction and human rights violations being committed by Indonesia in West Papua.
- – West Papua has been excluded from the negotiations, despite being a significant source of Indonesian resources.
- – The IPWP urges the EU to conduct a thorough human rights review of Indonesian rule in West Papua before proceeding with the ratification of the FTA.
- – If no such human rights review is undertaken, the IPWP urges all national parliaments to condition their support of the FTA on Indonesia facilitating a visit to West Papua by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
The IPWP expresses its profound concern about the EU–Indonesia FTA, which effectively gives EU approval to continued widespread deforestation in West Papua, and rides roughshod over the human rights of West Papuans, who have suffered under Indonesian occupation for over six decades.
On 23 September 2025, after nine years of negotiations, the EU and Indonesia signed the “EU-Indonesia Free Trade and Investment Protection Agreement”. The Agreement, which is expected to come into force in January 2027, aims to increase trade and increase market access by eliminating tariffs on 98.5% of EU–Indonesia trade.
We are alarmed that the conflict in West Papua is not mentioned anywhere in the FTA Sustainability Impact Assessment (SIA), including in the EU’s human rights review. West Papua provides a significant proportion of Indonesia’s crude resources for export, including in the palm oil, LNG, and metal markets.
West Papua’s exclusion from the SIA is of particular concern because of the unparallelled deforestation and environmental destruction currently ongoing in the territory. 71% of West Papua’s forest cover decrease has occurred since 2011, while a 2021 study predicts that West Papua will lose 13% of its remaining forest cover by 2036.
West Papua contains many of the most destructive industrial projects on earth. Chief amongst these is the government-designated National Strategic Project (PSN) in the southeastern Regency of Merauke, which was launched in 2024 and is dedicated to sugarcane, bioethanol fuel, and rice production. The initial PSN spanned three-million-hectares in total – an area roughly the size of Belgium – and was described by conservation news service Mongabay as the largest deforestation project in human history.
However, in December 2025, the Merauke PSN was expanded to the entire South Papua province and will now cover an additional 490,000 hectares of agribusiness production. The original Merauke PSN was predicted to release 782.45 million additional tonnes of CO2 upon completion, more than doubling Indonesia’s existing yearly CO2 emissions. This figure will now, of course, be even higher. We note with alarm that the climate impact of the South Papua PSN alone would wipe out over half of the net reduction of all European Union emissions projected between the years 2015 and 2030.
Industrial mega-projects like the South Papua PSN are a significant cause of human rights abuses on the ground in West Papua. West Papua is a highly militarised society, in which human rights violations are committed with near-total impunity. According to Human Rights Defenders, there were 105,878 West Papuan Internally Displaced Peoples (IDPs) as of January 2026, meaning that roughly one in twenty-five indigenous West Papuans is currently displaced. Indonesia has also enforced a strict ban on foreign journalists entering West Papua for decades.
In 2022, the European Commission joined international fora including the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) and the Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States (OACPS) in demanding that Indonesia facilitate a visit to West Papua by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). 113 UN Member States – a clear majority of the UN General Assembly – have now made this demand. Despite this, Indonesia has refused to allow the OHCHR access to West Papua since 2018.
In confirming EU support for the OHCHR visit, then-Vice President of the Commission Josep Borrel stated: “The EU encourages Indonesia to allow the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to visit West Papua and has urged Indonesia to extend standing invitations to all Special Rapporteurs and Mandate holders.” He also noted ongoing concern with regards to “the safeguarding of freedoms of expression, association, and peaceful assembly in West Papua” and that there would be a need for respect for human rights to be “embedded in any Free Trade Agreement”. Why, then, has West Papua been excluded from the EU’s own human rights assessment?
Finally, the IPWP considers that the EU failed to take into account Indonesia’s ongoing denial of West Papuan self-determination when signing the FTA. Indonesia’s claim to West Papua under international law rests on the 1969 “Act of Free Choice”, in which a group of 1,022 West Papuans (handpicked from an estimated population of 800,000) voted for integration with Indonesia, amid allegations of coercion, military violence and intimidation. West Papua is therefore a place of incomplete decolonisation.
The IPWP calls for the following steps to be taken before the FTA enters into force:
- – The EU must conduct a thorough human rights review of Indonesian rule in West Papua before proceeding with the ratification of the FTA.
- – If no such human rights review is undertaken, national parliaments should condition their support of the FTA on Indonesia facilitating a visit to West Papua by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
