Written by: Dhiya Farras Suryakusuma Staff of Research and Development

On November 25th, 2025, Indonesia’s west island, Sumatra, was hit by a major flood which destroyed three major provinces. The flood, which has been ongoing for weeks, has caused more than one thousand reported deaths. However, the Indonesian government still has not declared the flood as a national disaster. The Indonesian government has also rejected foreign aid, sparking protests all over the country. As a response, some regional governments have attempted correspondences with the UN (United Nations) to aid post-disaster recovery. Yet, the central government has criticized this action by claiming that it is not in line with both the national constitution and ASEAN’s non-interference principle.

Indonesian Government Responses
At the end of November, the world was shocked with a series of major disasters occurring in Southeast Asia, including the Indonesian island of Sumatra. Major floods and landslides occurred in three Sumatran provinces, Aceh, West Sumatra, and North Sumatra, causing heavy damages. At least 1,090 victims have died due to the disaster (Octavia & Ramadhan, 2025). After the major flood on November 25th, several minor floods and landslides continued to happen, worsening regional situations. These disasters have caused interruptions in both road and internet access, isolating villages and obstructing aid distribution. 

Despite the direness of the situation, the Indonesian central government has yet to declare a national disaster status. In fact, the central government has been quite slow in responding: the main relief post was only built after around five days after the disaster first hit (BBC, 2025). This action has been considered a contributing factor to the increasing number of victims. The Indonesian central government has repeatedly made claims that they have already done “their best” to handle the disaster. Even the current president, Prabowo Subianto, stated that situations were “already under control” (Ng et al., 2025). 

 The president, in one of his statements, also stated that Indonesia does not require aid from other countries. Subianto claimed that the government has turned down offers of aid from partner countries because Indonesia can “manage itself”. Even when Malaysian medical aid entered Indonesia, the Minister of Home Affairs, Tito Karnavian, stated that the aid was nothing compared to Indonesia’s disaster management resources (Kompas TV, 2025). 

These statements have sparked anger, mainly from the Indonesian civilians. They are angry because access to foreign aid, which supposedly could have helped Sumatra recover quicker from the disaster, is being blocked by the very authority responsible for citizen welfare. On the other hand, this statement has offended Malaysians, who have criticized both Tito’s statement and the Indonesian central government’s response, as they were deemed unfair to compare the central government’s duty to take care of the people with the aid from Malaysia (Yusof, 2025). This later drove Indonesians, especially disaster victims, to resist instead of waiting for the central government’s “help”.

Sumatra’s People and Resistance 
Sumatrans did not remain silent. In fact, many have tried to debunk the central government’s statements. Through citizen journalism, victims have attempted to prove that the current situation in Sumatra is far from “under control”, with improper disaster relief posts, lack of basic necessities, and an overwhelming number of people still missing weeks after the floods. Electricity, which the government has claimed to be back on, in fact has not been fully repaired and only came back on when the president and other officials came to Sumatra (Dirgantara & Belarminus, 2025). Seeing this, the people in Sumatra demanded the central government declare this disaster as a national one. Yet, the central government has repeatedly stated that they could handle this disaster on their own, refusing to grant a national disaster status to affected areas.

Indonesians have interpreted the central government’s refusal to declare a national disaster status as a sign of overwhelming arrogance. Without any concrete action, the death toll is mounting, causing civilians to suspect that the government is only looking to “sacrifice” more people in Sumatra. The central government’s indifference has encouraged victims to turn to international help. Aceh is consistent in doing this, being the province with the highest number of deaths, many villages still under isolation (CNN Indonesia, 2025). The province’s governor wrote a letter to the UN asking for international aid to accelerate recovery from special agencies, such as UNICEF and UNDP (Aswara, 2025). 

Victims also held protests in various ways, one of them by raising white flags in affected areas. In Aceh, this movement is not intended as a sign of surrender, but as a symbol of solidarity and empathy (Abdurrahman, 2025). Aceh residents also used the white flags as a way to attract international attention after the central government rejected foreign aid, thus slowing down post-disaster recovery. The white flag has become a symbol of advocating concerns to the international world without using any verbal language (BBC News Indonesia, 2025).

The central government views that the Aceh government has overstepped its authority by maintaining correspondence with the UN. The Aceh government’s action is considered to go against national laws and norms, especially Article 10 paragraph (1) of Law No. 23 of 2014 about the authority of foreign policy (Detiknews, 2025). Yet, the Aceh government has stressed that this action is in no way contradictory to national law and is, in fact, needed to help Aceh recover quickly from the disaster (CNN Indonesia, 2025). The same argument also applies to the protest movement using white flags by Aceh residents. The white flags are intended to pressure the central government to categorize this disaster as a national one, allow the access for international community to help Sumatra, and take action against companies responsible for damaging the environment in Sumatra (BBC News Indonesia, 2025), and not to discredit the central government in any way.

Between Humanitarian Aid and Sovereignty
The central government’s refusal to categorize what’s happening in Sumatra as a national disaster is the main reason behind the lack of penetration of foreign aid. Technically, foreign aid could only freely enter Indonesia in the event of an officially-recognized national disaster (Nugroho, 2025). Knowing this, victims have searched for other ways to still acquire so much as international help, causing them to write letters to the UN and raise white flags as symbolic efforts. 

Yet, these actions later became viewed as futile as they could not fully help Indonesian civilians to get foreign aid immediately. Although these actions received international attention in a way, international society could not do such a thing as sending foreign aid secretly to Indonesians civilians, as the central government has not opened full access to international help. As a result, nothing much can be done by regional governments in Sumatra and their people. Not only that, ASEAN’s non-interference principle, a norm that Indonesia loyally follows, has also hindered the distribution of aid from neighboring countries. Due to this principle, other countries have refrained from providing assistance, lest they be seen as violating Indonesia’s national sovereignty.

Conclusion
Due to major floods in Sumatra, residents have looked for a range of ways to acquire help, starting from demanding official recognition up to seeking international attention. Yet, the Indonesian central government has repeatedly refused to grant the disaster a national status, rejecting foreign aid from other countries as well. Victims have turned to “non-conventional” ways, such as communicating with international institutions and raising white flags to pressure the Indonesian government into doing something. Yet, these actions could not do much due to conceptions of national sovereignty and ASEAN’s non-interference principle. Without any real solutions from the central government, it is debatable whether civil efforts can result in anything at all. Indonesia’s reality highlights the importance of political will as a defining factor in the success of civilians’ symbolic advocacy efforts.

References
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