'We will engage civil society groups'.

from THE JAKARTA POST -- MONDAY, JANUARY 11, 2010 In an open recruitment, Rafendi Djamin was appointed Indonesia's commissioner to the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission for Human Rights (AICHR) that was launched last year. Calling his new post at the regional body an "unpaid job", the coordinator for the Human Rights Watch Group (HRWG) says he was challenged to work with those he used to criticize in his lifelong endeavors to establish a strong human rights in the region. The Jakarta Post's Ary Hermawan talked to the 52- year-old rights defender at his office recently to discuss the future of the AICHR. The following are excerpts from the interview: Question: What was the result of the AICHR's first meeting? Answer: We haven't made any decisions yet on what programs to launch ... The only decision we made at our first meeting was the number of meetings we should have, since we have a lot of issues that we need to address, which concern the infrastructure of the organization and its activities. We are currently still using seed money for operational funding: …