Cultural Expertise and the Social Justice Defense of Indigenous Peoples Rights in the Indonesian Constitutional Court
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31078/consrev1122Keywords:
Constitutional court, Cultural expertise, Human rights, Indigenous peoples, Social justiceAbstract
This article is about rights to legal defense by using customary justice as part of human rights. Given the context of excessive exploitation over natural resources in Indonesia, indigenous people’s livelihood has been constantly deprived. Even, there have been laws and its policies influencing their cultural knowledge, traditions, and its social lives (Bedner and Arizona 2019). In a landmark ruling, Indonesia’s Constitutional Court through the verdict Number 35/PUU-X/2012 has invalidated the Indonesian government’s claim to millions of hectares of forest land, potentially giving indigenous and local communities the right to manage their customary forests. However, although the court ruling does not automatically change the situation at ground, the cultural expertise has played important role to shape ideas in recognizing progressively their expertise before the court system. This article dissects the role of cultural expertise has been translated into the court rules and influence to the practice, understanding debates and practices of cultural expertise, and assessing constitutional court decisions which contradict to 2013’s landmark decision and understanding the meaning for social justice. Using an interdisciplinary study of law, this article found that locals are rarely deemed as expert at court while the cultural expertise has been used to underpin their claims mostly over natural resources conflict cases. Really unfortunate that their expertise does not automatically protect rights and social justice due to lack of capacity, political economy driven policies, and various vested interests.
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