The high tech way to fight religious conflict

• Religious-related conflict on the rise since 1998
• Received a grant from the US State Department

 

ONE of the greatest problems in the world today is that of religion-related conflict. These conflicts know no borders and have sparked wars as well as set people against each other in countries across the globe.

Two senior academics from Indonesia decided to turn to technology and the digital realm to come up with an early warning system to look for and map religious conflict hot spots. Their brainchild is  called the Indonesian Interfaith Weather Station or IIWS.

The idea behind IIWS is simple. The system uses weather station metaphors to look for and map conflicts as well as any sort of violence related to religious groups in specific parts of Indonesia.

The goal is for IIWS to be an accurate and reliable early warning system, which will alert the public when a conflict is brewing. The authorities will then have enough time to take the necessary preventive measures.

“Just imagine if there had been an early warning system for the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that claimed nearly 250,000 lives. Perhaps, the impact would not have been as devastating.

“If an early warning system is widely available for natural disasters, maybe we can also create one for non natural disasters, such as social conflicts,” Dr Leonard Chrysostomos Epafras, one of the founding members of IIWS told Digital News Asia (DNA) recently in Jakarta.

Dr Leonard is also a core doctoral faculty member of the Indonesian Consortium for Religious Studies (ICRS), which comprises three universities: Gadjah Mada University, State Islamic University Sunan Kalijaga, and Duta Wacana Christian University, where he is working towards an integrated degree in inter-religious studies.

Leonard is not the only one behind  IIWS, A colleague, who is also a core doctoral faculty member of ICRS, Dr Dicky Sofjan (pic right), is the one who encouraged him to run with the idea.

“People think we are crazy when we propose and talk about the system, but as Dicky says, ‘progress to great things comes from crazy ideas’. We have to pursue this as far as we can,” Leonard explained.

The duo, with the help of a few other people has completed the first phase of developing IIWS, which includes research and building the prototype of the system, a process that took one year.

Earlier this year, the hard work paid off with IIWS receiving an undisclosed ‘small amount’ in the form of a grant from US State Department represented by US Embassy in Indonesia.

“The grant will definitely keep us going. It will keep us developing, improving, networking, and looking for the right partners to support our move forward.

“In order to move forward we will need greater support. There will be endless traveling to rural areas as well as overseas to convince people that we need an early warning system for religious-related conflict,” he continued.

When asked about how their system will measure up against similar, perhaps more sophisticated systems used by the police or army, Leonard said that IIWS should complement those systems as it has the social welfare approach.

“Remember, there is no such thing as a pure religious conflict. It is indeed a social conflict, filled with political and economic interest, that brings along some religious symbols.

“So rather than looking at this from a law enforcement perspective, we are looking at the elements from a social welfare perspective by considering the people’s behaviour and socio-economic condition. Conflict areas suffer the most in terms of socio-economic welfare,” he explained.

Turning post-factum analysis into pre-emptive measures
Both Leonard and Dicky advocate the urgency of this system simply because religious-related conflict has been on the rise since Indonesia finally turned towards democracy in 1998.

“Since the country’s turn toward democracy less than 20 years ago, the frequency of social conflict has increased, while the state seems to have no ability to resolve them.

“This is not because the state does not care. The government is now actually more aware of human rights issue and know that they cannot cross the line,” Leonard (pic right) stated.

As academics, their job is mainly to provide an aftermath or post-factum analysis, to find out what sparked the conflict, why it happened at that time and how much economic and social loss was incurred.

Academics often become overly familiar and tired of constantly focusing on post-event analysis. Leonard and Dicky feel that academics need to step up their role and move towards prevention.

“An analysis only comes after one incident has happened; once a church or mosque has been burned down, after people are injured or maybe killed in the process,

“Now could there be something systemic that we can do to help prevent this from happening in the first place?” Leonard asked.

The answer, with the help of technology, is a resounding yes.

“We want to leverage on public participation that has increased since democratisation. With the help of social platforms, we want IIWS to become a crowdsourcing platform, where people can participate to make their area more peaceful,” he added.

How it works
IIWS uses weather station metaphors such as sunny, cloudy, drizzly, rainy, and stormy to describe the state of an area in terms of religious-nuanced conflicts and violence.

Before the system provides the ‘weather’ status of one area, it needs to extract and process data from various sources, including existing religious and social conflict-related data from the Ministry of Religious Affairs, and other non-profit organisations.

The system will also extract data from various social media and geo-tagging platforms, as well as media outlets.

All data from across the country will then be sent to the IIWS headquarters to be analysed. The data will then be converted into a weather status and disseminated to stakeholders.

The IIWS mobile application prototype is now available online and as a mobile application on Android devices.

The mobile app will be used by field monitor officers or the general public to upload information such as reports, photos, or videos that they feel can spark potential conflict.

IIWS headquarter then will make a report card of every report, sort out the report, and come up with an analysis.

Challenges
Taking on a subject that is quite sensitive, both Leonard and Dicky agree that their system is imperfect.

“There are many unanswered questions and loopholes in the system that we need to further answer and improve in our second phase of IIWS development,” Leonard admitted.

Some of the important questions that the team has been working on now is to ensure who can access the weather status of each area, how to ensure that reports filed by public are legitimate and not misused for someone’s special interest.

The team also needs to decide on whether they will accept a public report first, or put experts on the ground to take a closer look at each area and report back to headquarters.

The team has also yet to decide on the level of analysis required of each area, whether to go only by cities, regions, or villages, to avoid over generalisation and over representation.

Leonard claimed that some neighbouring countries, as well as the European Union have expressed their interest in the progress.

In spite of all the challenges, the duo believe that the country can benefit from the idea and it will people participation in maintaining a stable and peaceful environment.