The peace process in Aceh has been lauded as a great success, both internationally and within Indonesia. And so it is. Coming in the wake of the cataclysmic Indian Ocean tsunami of December 2004, the mediators and the conflict parties pulled off what many observers had previously considered to be a virtual impossibility: a sustained end to armed hostilities. Within this justifiably celebrated success, however, there is one area that has attracted relatively little attention and where progress has been far less substantial: the human rights and justice agenda. 

This report seeks to explain the contextual factors and underlying political dynamics which gave rise to the outcome described above, as well as the details of negotiations and implementation which contributed to it. It also asks what more could have been done.