From Colonialism to Human Security: Addressing the Gendered Costs of Palm Oil and the Dispossession of West Papua’s Indigenous Communities

Szilvia Csevár and Yasmine Rugarli

This spotlight is based on the full article Greasing the Wheels of Colonialism: Palm Oil Industry in West Papua published in Global Studies Quarterly. As with other spotlights, this piece reflects the views of the authors and publication does not imply endorsement.

A Land Marked by Violence and Extraction

West Papua is often portrayed as a resource frontier – rich in forests, minerals, and fertile land. But behind this narrative lies a tragic reality of colonial dispossession. Since Indonesia’s forceful integration of the territory in the late 1960s, Indigenous Papuans have faced militarization, displacement, and systemic violence. Today, the palm oil industry has become one of the sharpest tools of this exploitation.

Palm oil companies, backed by state concessions, treat Papuan territories as “empty land.” Protected forests and Indigenous settlements are bulldozed to make way for vast monocultures. Military and private security forces accompany these projects, silencing dissent with intimidation and violence. The impacts fall heaviest on Indigenous women, whose traditional roles as caregivers and environmental stewards are deeply intertwined with the lands now being destroyed. For Papuan communities, the expansion of palm oil is not only an environmental disaster – it is an assault on survival, identity, and dignity.

Colonial Roots, Modern Face

Although colonialism is often spoken of as history, West Papua shows that it is an ongoing reality. The region today exhibits patterns of both internal and settler colonialism: Dutch rule gave way to Indonesian administration, but the underlying structures of dispossession remained. Indigenous Papuans were marginalized, while state-sponsored migration and extractive industries entrenched a system of internal colonialism that displaced and minoritized them on their own land. At the same time, settler colonial dynamics are visible in the drive to permanently replace Indigenous communities with incoming populations and industrial projects, erasing their presence and knowledge systems.

Palm oil is central to this story. Indonesia, the world’s largest producer, increasingly targets West Papua as the “last frontier” for expansion. Large palm oil projects are textbook cases of land grabs, erasing Indigenous stewardship of forests, displacing communities, and intensifying militarization.

The Gendered Cost of Palm Oil Expansion

While all Papuan communities suffer from dispossession, women bear particular burdens. Traditionally, Papuan women are custodians of land and biodiversity. They grow staple crops, gather wild foods, and preserve ecological knowledge vital for community resilience. This role makes them both protectors of the environment and primary providers for their families.

Palm oil plantations disrupt these roles. Gardens are destroyed, forests vanish, and access to medicinal plants and clean water is lost. Women are often excluded from land ownership and decision-making, leaving them powerless when male relatives sell or lease community land. Militarization compounds these harms, as women face harassment, sexual violence, and stigmatization – tactics designed to break resistance and fragment communities.

As one Marind woman explained:

“Oil palm is always hungry for more land and more water… it devours everything in its path... It does not care about the wellbeing of others – the plants, the animals, or us Marind.”

This loss of land is not only economic, nor is it merely environmental – it is cultural. In Papuan philosophy, “Land is Mama.” Dispossession severs the intimate bond between women and their environment, eroding identity and resilience.

Greenwashing Colonial Violence

International attention to palm oil has grown, especially around deforestation and biodiversity loss. The European Union, for instance, has restricted palm oil imports and introduced sustainability requirements. Indonesia has responded with certification schemes such as the Indonesian Sustainable Palm Oil (ISPO) standard and declarations like the Manokwari Declaration.

Without more meaningful changes in practice, though, these efforts often serve as greenwashing. Major corporations maintain access to global markets through sustainability labels while continuing to expand plantations through land grabs, illegal logging, and rights violations. Smallholder farmers are excluded, while Indigenous communities remain silenced. Instead of dismantling colonial structures, such “green” policies risk reinforcing them.

Why This Matters Beyond West Papua?

The violence in West Papua is not an isolated case. It reflects a global pattern where extractive industries expand by dispossessing Indigenous communities, erasing their knowledge, and militarizing their lands. The convergence of multiple crises is not unique to West Papua but recurs wherever Indigenous territories are targeted for extractive activities, including:

• Colonial legacies that deny Indigenous Peoples self-determination and sustain racialized power structures.
• Environmental destruction that accelerates climate change, biodiversity loss, and displacement.
• Gendered harms that marginalize Indigenous women while undermining their vital role in community resilience and climate adaptation.

Mainstream frameworks of peace and security remain ill-equipped to address these interconnected harms. Too often, they prioritize state interests, economic growth, or national security over the survival and dignity of Indigenous communities.

Towards Human Security and Justice

To break this cycle, we must shift the lens from state security to human security – a perspective rooted in the survival, livelihood, and dignity of people. For West Papua, this means:

• Recognizing land dispossession and militarization as forms of colonial violence.
• Addressing long-standing colonial harms and legacies that continue to shape extractive practices and patterns of oppression.
• Centering Indigenous women’s voices and ecological knowledge in climate and environmental security debates.
• Holding states and corporations accountable for their harmful, unsound, and rights-violating practices, including land grabs, deforestation, displacement, and the use of violence to suppress resistance, as well as greenwashing practices that perpetuate harm.

Indigenous Papuans are not passive victims; they are agents of resistance. Local organizations and women’s networks are working tirelessly to defend land, culture, and community survival. The international community must move beyond symbolic solidarity and actively support Indigenous-led efforts to reclaim land, demand accountability from corporations and state actors, and dismantle the structures of violence that palm oil expansion represents.

Conclusions

Palm oil may be marketed as a cheap and versatile commodity, but in West Papua its true cost is measured in lost forests, militarized communities, and silenced women. The industry thrives on colonial logics that treat Indigenous lives as disposable and their lands as empty.

Shifting towards justice requires more than “sustainable” certification schemes. It demands a reckoning with colonial histories and the racial-capitalist systems that sustain them. Addressing these long-standing colonial harms and legacies is essential to dismantling the structures that enable ongoing dispossession and violence. It calls for a reimagined approach to human security – one that places Indigenous women and their knowledge at the center of climate adaptation and peacebuilding.

In the words of Papuan women: “Land is Mama.” Protecting it means protecting life itself.

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Szilvia Csevár is a lecturer in Public International Law at The Hague University of Applied Sciences (THUAS) and a researcher within the Centre of Expertise Global and Inclusive Learning (GIL).