Mansour Fakih passed away in February 2004.
His obituary can be found Here.
Before coming to CIE Mansour worked at the Institute for Research, Education, and Social and Economic Development (LP3ES) as a member of the field staff and a researcher. While there, he worked with a group of others to renew and develop methodologies of education and training. In that group was an activist from Volunteers in Asia (VIA), Russ Dilts, with whom Mansour worked closely subsequently.
While at CIE, Mansour deepened his understanding of the potential of education in social change. His dissertation was titled: The Role of Nongovernmental Organizations in Social Transformation: A Participatory Inquiry in Indonesia.
He returned to Indonesia and from 1993-96 he was the Country Representative for OXFAM-UK/I in Indonesia. Later he worked as a senior consultant at Resources Management and Development Consultants (REMDEC), Jakarta until 2002. In September 2003 he returned to Amherst to work with the Institute for Training and Development (ITD) on a program for a group of Indonesian leaders of Pesantren – Islamic boarding schools.
Mansour was the founder and a leader of the Institute for the Study of Islamic Thought and Civilizations INSISTS – an institute developed as an open organization for many social movement activists and intellectuals from throughout Indonesia. Mansour himself liked to refer to INSISTS as “the school for Indonesian social movement activists.”
More recently, Mansour was a member of the National Commission for Human Rights (KOMNAS HAM). In addition, he served as one of only two people representing all of Asia in the “Helsinki Process,” an international forum coordinated by the Foreign Ministry of Finland, several Southern nations, and various international NGOs to work for solutions to the problems of globalization.
Mansour was a very active author and public speaker. He published articles and books on gender, globalization, and human rights – always with a theme of social transformation. A complete list of his publications in Bahasa Indonesia is available here.
In 2003, he published Community Integrated Pest Management in Indonesia: Institutionalizing participation and people-centered approaches. He also wrote an article published by CIE entitled NGOs in Indonesia: Issues of Hegemony and Social Change.
The publication – Mansour Fakih: A book that will always be open” – is a lengthy biography in English about Mansour and his long career as a Muslim scholar/educator and social activist in Indonesia. [3-04]