Legal Clinics in Indonesian Courts

Cate Sumner from AIJP AusAID (second left) and Diani Sadiawati from Bappenas (second right) when presenting their papers on the workshop.

Jakarta | badilag.net/english (5/4/10)

AusAID facilitated the making of legal aid guidelines that can be used by judiciaries under the Indonesian Supreme Court by holding a workshop on Tuesday (31/3) to obtain as many inputs as possible for the guide lines to support the establishment of legal clinics in courts as stipulated by the Law.

The workshop which was held in Jakarta was attended representatives from Bappenas, Ministry of Justice and Human Rights, 4 court jurisdictions, Administrative Bureau in the Supreme Court, NGOs, Legal Aid Foundations and Advocates. Director General of Badilag, Wahyu Widiana, was also seen attending the meeting accompanied by Vice Chief Judge of Jakarta High Religious Court, Zainuddin Fajari and Chief Judges of East and South Jakarta Religious Court.

.

Legal clinics should have been available in every General and Religious Court as required by Law No. 48/2009 and Law No. 50/2009. But in reality, Religious courts are facing obstacles to establish the legal clinics due to the absence of budget.

After one-roof system, none of the judiciaries in the Supreme Court that owns legal aid guidelines. However, Religious Courts have long been providing legal aids for the poor and marginalized through the schemes of ‘prodeo cases’ and mobile courts. Though, these two items are not under the code of ‘legal aid budget’.

Badilag (Religious Courts Body) will formulate legal aid guidelines in the near future. Rough draft of the guidelines will then be disseminated to all High Religious courts all over Indonesia for improvement.