Debra Yatim

Activist, journalist, columnist, film and documentary maker and founder of at least three non-governmental organizations in Indonesia.

Debra Yatim has published four collections of poetry. She writes a column for a women’s magazine, and is currently working on a cycle of one-woman plays on polygamy, and a new collection of poetry on the issue of climate change.

Debra, born to Acehnese father Abdullah Yatim and Manadonese mother Caroline Kalempouw, studied at the Academy of Publicists in Jakarta and the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Australia. She has worked as a journalist for various Australian and Indonesian media outlets, including The Jakarta Post. It was on one of her assignments as a journalist that she came to understand the problems of marginalized people. Driven by compassion and a profound sense of justice, she became active in advocating human rights and the rights of minority groups.¹

1. The Jakarta Post ↩