For most competitive martial arts, there is a governing organization that oversees and regulates the sport. In Taekwondo its the WT or World Taekwondo. For Karate it is the World Karate Federation and for Muay Thai, it is International Federation of Muay Thai Associations. For Pencak Silat, its Persekutuan Pencak Silat Antarabangsa, translated as the International Pencak Silat Federation and most commonly referred to as PERSILAT.
PERSILAT was founded in on March 11, 1980 in Jakarta as an international sanctioning body that sanctions international Pencak Silat championships. The organization has their own juridical personality and fiscal autonomy, having jurisdiction and competence over all associated organizations.
To non-native speakers, PERSILAT is often confused with the word pesilat. PERSILAT the special abbreviation of Persekutuan Pencak Silat Antarabangsa while pesilat is the Pencak Silat athlete or practitioner.
At the time of this writing, the President of PERSILAT is Prabowo Subianto, a former Army lieutenant General, who is currently the Minister of Defense of the Republic of Indonesia. Although PERSILAT was founded in Indonesia, its founding member organizations include IPSI (Indonesia), PERSISI (Singapore), PESAKA (Malaysia) and PERSIB (Brunei Darussalam). These are known as PERSILAT Founding Members.
PERSILAT consists of Regional Federations (RF) that cover larger geographical regions such as Asia, Europe, Africa, Americas, etc. Within these regions there are National Federations (NF) that are limited to specific countries (ex: Thailand, Egypt, Uzbekistan, UK etc). Affiliated Members are Pencak Silat associations recognized by the national authorized agency of the respective country. For example Thailand is an Affiliated Member of PERSILAT.
An Associated Member is an organization has not recognized by the national authorized agency of the respective country. A Pencak Silat club or individual which just been appointed to represent PERSILAT in the relevant country is called a Junior Member.
The objectives of PERSILAT are:
- To support the achievement of social, economic development and human progress, world peace, and the Millennium Development Goals, and to encourage every PERSILAT member to come together to contribute to achieve the common goal of building a better world;
- To promote and spread the sporting spirit of Pencak Silat, and bring a positive influence to everyone, especially the younger generation;
- To work towards a common goal of ensuring the health, safety and protection in the sport of Pencak Silat, and to protect and ensure the safety and welfare of Pencak Silat athletes around the world;
- To prevent all methods or practices which might severely damage the integrity, image and value of Pencak Silat; to promote the sport of Pencak Silat as integrity, equity, fairness, transparency and healthy exercise;
- To create a fair, equitable, scientific, independent and objective ranking system for the ratings of Pencak Silat athletes, and to provide fairness and equal opportunity at all times to all associated parties and participants;
- To create a sustainable competitive advantage to provide more opportunities for the best and brightest Pencak Silat athletes to help their dreams come true, as well as achieve our common goal;
- To sanction high quality competition based on the criteria set by the International Federation, and to recognize the best athlete as our Champion;
- To organize high standard Pencak Silat competition, courses, activities, according to the processes as per stated in the document.
