Indonesia has a number of regulations regarding the recognition of indigenous communities, but these regulations have not had a significant impact on the protection of indigenous rights.

There are 2,359 indigenous community groups throughout Indonesia, with approximately 17 million individual members. However, only a small portion has received new legal recognition. By 2020, there were only 65 newly recognized customary forests. Even in 2020, the minister issued a revision of the regulation that is feared to complicate the process of recognizing customary forests. Several factors contribute to the difficulty in establishing customary forests in practice, one of which is the conditional recognition of indigenous communities in various laws and regulations.

On the other hand, the existence of indigenous communities is threatened amidst numerous efforts to plunder natural resources and convert forest functions, which undermine the rights of indigenous communities. Indigenous communities become impoverished and oppressed due to the imbalance in resource control. Their lands are seized for palm oil plantations, mining activities, forestry concessions, and conservation permits. Many indigenous communities are involved in conflicts with companies that seize their living areas.

The current laws are not fully supportive of indigenous communities. Therefore, indigenous communities require a special law that recognizes and protects their rights. However, in 2020, amid the pandemic that caused multidimensional crises globally, including in Indonesia, the Indonesian government together with the parliament showed ill intentions by passing two problematic bills, namely the Omnibus Law on Job Creation which became Law No. 11 of 2020 and the Mining Law which became Law No. 3 of 2020. On one hand, the necessary bills for protecting indigenous communities like the Indigenous Peoples Bill and the Sexual Violence Elimination Bill have yet to be passed.

In early 2021, the Indonesian Human Rights Study Center (HuMa) released the HuMa Outlook 2021, which attempts to analyze the legislative process and the government’s support for the 4 bills included in the 2020 national legislative program.

 

The HuMa Outlook 2021 can be downloaded here.

Other publications can be accessed at the HuMa publication portal .