Badilag’s Justice for All Appreciated
AND JUSTICE FOR ALL: DG of Badilag, Wahyu Widiana (left), enthusiastically explaining the efforts of religious courts in implementing Justice for All, while Lisa Noor Humaidah, Matt Stephens and Syarif from the World Bank seriously listening.
Jakarta | badilag.net/english
Directorate General of Religious Courts Body in the Supreme Court of Indonesia receives appreciation from the World Bank for the effort to realize Justice for All in the country. The appreciation was directly conveyed by the delegation of the World Bank (WB) to the DG of Badilag, Wahyu Widiana, when the delegation visited him in his office Tuesday afternoon (27/7/2010).
“Under your leadership, we have seen an impressive development of the continuous efforts that religious courts have been undertaking to implement Access to Justice and Justice for the Poor programs. We want to learn from the success of religious courts in the efforts to guarantee wider access to justice for the poor,” Matt Stephens from the WB told DG of Badilag.
Matt Stephens was a Governance Adviser of the World Bank in the Philippines who is now pulled back to Indonesia to work with his colleagues at the Indonesia’s WB. He came to Badilag, accompanied by Lisa Noor Humaidah, Women’s Legal Empowerment Manager the World Bank of Indonesia, and Syarif, a member of WB partnership.
.Prodeo, Circuit Court and Legal Aid Post
Asked his suggestions whether access to justice can be implemented by other jurisdictions, such as general courts, Wahyu Widiana mentioned three services that have been particular ‘icons’ for access to justice in the religious courts, namely prodeo facility, circuit court, and Pos Bantuan Hukum (Legal Aid Post in the court).
“Religious courts clients are mostly poor. That is why we constantly control religious courts across the country to always make court fees affordable and as transparent as possible. For poor people, we provide prodeo facility in which the court fees are waived,” said the DG.
“This (prodeo) facility has been provided in the religious courts since long time ago, although this has not been satisfactorily optimized in practice due to, for instance, the absence of a clear guideline to reimburse the fund allocated by the state and the difficulty of poor people to get poverty certificate as the requirement for them to get the facility,” Wahyu added.
As for circuit court, Wahyu said, religious courts do not face significant problems in executing this program. A considerable number of cases have been resolved through circuit court yearly. However, Wahyu hoped that the budget for circuit court could be improved so that much more people would be assisted by the courts.
Meanwhile, Legal Aid Post (posbakum) in religious courts will begin to implement in 2011. “Poor people will very much benefit from the posbakum. They will be provided consultancy, legal advice and application-making even representative before the court for jinayat cases (Islamic criminal cases) at Mahkamah Syar’iyah in Aceh,” he said.
Potential Cooperation
In the end of the meeting, Stephens asked the DG if the World Bank could provide possible assistance to help implement access to justice not only in the religious courts but also in other jurisdictions.
Wahyu any cooperation is possible and welcome to help the poor to have a wider access to justice. For the time being, he asked the World Bank to involve religious courts judges in any programs that can enhance their capacity building because the judges are the front liners in guaranteeing access to justice in the society. (c)