4th Cycle, 41st Session (7-18 November 2022)
To date, Indonesia has enacted the Human Rights Law (No. 39/1999) and the Human Rights Court Law (No. 26/2000) establishing a mechanism to investigate and prosecute gross human rights violations, defined as crimes against humanity and genocide (but not including war crimes). The government has been initiated to revise the human rights law and human rights court law.
However, such achievements do not necessarily provide protection to the people. They did confirm that all repression, injuries, and suffering needed to be repaired and that any violation, harm, or abuse of individual rights and social justice should be punished according to the law. Across the country, however, many victims still suffer the consequences of past human rights abuses while ongoing violations still occur in parts of Indonesia such as Papua. While victims of historical or ongoing human rights violations have tried to utilize human rights-related laws and institutions, their efforts have been largely unable to drive institutions to initiate the legal processes for the protection and fulfilment of human rights.
Conflict not only violates the victim’s civil and political rights but is also accompanied by the violation of social and economic rights. Yet widespread abuses of social and economic rights are largely missing from accounts of conflict and oppression. These abuses include the loss of access to land, natural resources and livelihoods, poverty, destruction of homes and possessions, forced displacement to squalid camps, and exclusion from education and health care services. In addition, the economic, social and cultural aspects of victims’ lives have been impacted. The failure of the Indonesian government to be accountable for conflict and gross human rights violations also entrenches impunity and increases the vulnerability of victims as they face impoverishment and are marginalized from their rights.