Legal Services to Indonesians in Remote Areas Boosted by New Program with Universities and PEKKA

President Joko Widodo has listed legal identity as one of five priorities in Indonesia’s Five Year Development Framework launched in January 2015. AIPJ research demonstrated there are an estimated 24-50 million children in Indonesia without a birth certificate. In poor households more than 50% of couples do not have a marriage certificate. This lack of legal identity limits full access to government services, such as education and health.

On 25-27 August 2015, content was launched for a new clinical legal professional practice program that will be delivered across Indonesian Islamic universities. This program will help people in remote Indonesian provinces with legal problems to access paralegal information services on legal identity and family law matters.  Its development was a collaboration between university legal aid clinic managers, law faculties, senior students and paralegals working with the PEKKA women-headed households legal clinics (KLIK). 

A fundamental element in providing legal identity documents is the availability of intermediaries, such as law students working in university clinics who can help people to understand and prepare court documents. There is an urgent need to train these law students so they can provide high quality professional services.

Five Government funded Islamic Universities (UIN) based in Banda Aceh, Bandung, Semarang, Jakarta and Pekanbaru, as well Muhummadiyah University in Medan participated in the meeting and will return to their universities with a complete curriculum for a professional practice program expected to be launched by 2016.

The university legal aid clinics have also agreed to collaborate with PEKKA in those regions where they both work. PEKKA paralegals and legal clinics currently operate in 20 of Indonesia’s 34 provinces.

AIPJ has partnered with the Monash University Faculty of Law who established and continue to support the Family Law Assistance Program for families in need near the university, and the Ministry of Religion, through the Directorate of Islamic Higher Education, who strongly support the program.

Professor Adrian Evans, Malcolm Bennett and Jenn Lindstrom from Monash University attended the training and shared almost 40 years of experience in operating university legal aid clinics at Monash University.


Other highlights from the meeting included:
•    The launch of an on-line library of resources for all university and CSO legal aid clinics. Most of the resources will be available to all Indonesian clinics on this website and a range of video teaching resources will be accessible to the staff at university and CSO legal aid clinics.
•    AIPJ’s ICT Adviser David Shirley introduced the case management systems for university legal aid clinics and explained that Webinar training videos and support will be available for each university.
•    Putri Amanda from PUSKAPA UI presented the scope of the Indonesian Network for Clinical Legal Education (www.INCLE.org) that was launched earlier this year. PEKKA and the Indonesian universities were familiarised with the legal clinic at Universitas Padjadjaran, an INCLE member, on the final day.