Peace Without Poison

Indonesia’s population control program started in 1970, twenty years after becoming a UNmember state, and only a few years after Suharto became president. Suharto’s militarydictatorship lasted from 1967 to 1998 and during this time he reduced the country’s total fertilityrate from 5.5 to 2.5 children per woman.Suharto made population control a high and personal priority and created the National FamilyPlanning Coordinating Board (BKKBN) in 1970 to reduce the total fertility rate. The Chairmanof the BKKBN had direct access to the president, participated in cabinet meetings and usedpresidential authority to pressure state governors to accomplish family planning targets.The BKKBN defused religious opposition to contraceptive use, build a human resource baseacross the country, and made population control a bureaucratic priority. It established a nationalnetwork of village-level family planning groups and used an active strategy of door-to-dooroutreach by fieldworkers. It also built alliances with national women’s organizations to endorsecontraceptive use and in 1974 it developed the idea of village family planning groups to supplycontraceptives and apply social pressure on married women to use contraceptives. By 1996,there were more than one million of such village family planning groups throughout Indonesia.I found no evidence to suggest that Suharto’s population control program made use of covert orinvoluntary methods throughout the seventies and eighties, but the drop in fertility from nearly 6354 | P a g e