Yoab Syatfle is the Prime Minister of the Executive Government of the Federal Republic of West Papua — an indigenous governance body established in October 2011 after the Third Papuan People’s Congress, representing 250-plus tribes across ten provinces of the Bird’s Head Peninsula. He previously served as Sorong Secretary of the Papua Traditional Council (Dewan Adat Papua). Amnesty International formally recognized him as a peaceful political activist after death threats against him in 2009. Sorong Regency — his former constituency — has ranked West Papua’s top oil palm deforesting district for three consecutive years, and on December 16, 2025 President Prabowo Subianto announced a B50 biofuel mandate requiring massive new palm-oil feedstock production across Papua. 2025 was already Papua’s worst-ever deforestation year — 77,678 hectares lost, a 348% jump over 2024. That mandate is the policy backdrop he brought to Granted in late April. What Yoab taught the team building Granted is that the applicant universe extends well past the US 501(c)(3). His two pipelines — a Rainforest Trust Ridge to Reef feasibility application for the Sorong customary territories, and a USAID Foreign Assistance for Programs Overseas concept paper — pulled Granted’s drafting flow into territory it had not seen: a Free Prior Informed Consent framework citing ILO Convention 169 and UNDRIP; a Threats Assessment grounded in current Indonesian state policy; partner-organization narratives for an indigenous self-governance body. Both pipelines reached section review.
The customary territories represented by his former constituency are not abstract conservation units: they are the specific forests currently being converted to oil palm under active commercial and state pressure.
