Suchergebnisse

Adequate housing plays a central role in people's lives as housing conditions influence people's health, the relationship between members of the households as well as their social life. As a developing country, Indonesia faces alarming challenges to provide affordable and adequate housing for its citizens, particularly for disadvantaged groups. The right to adequate housing is recognised in international conventions ratified by Indonesia and is also incorporated in Indonesian domestic legislation. However, this is not sufficient to guarantee the realisation of such right in practice. This study has identified that the right to adequate housing is often infringed at the local level, for instance through discriminatory regulation of access to affordable housing and in cases of forced evictions. The understanding of the human rights perspective at all levels of government is needed in implementing the right to housing. This requires a comprehensive approach. The right to housing is not just a matter of providing buildings, but it involves careful planning and budgeting, transparent regulations regarding land ownership and availability, social and economic acceptability, as well as cultural customs and expectations. To support the implementation of the right to housing, this study proposes that Indonesia improves its processes of decision making on the basis of the concept of "accountability as a process". This process contains the following elements: participation, monitoring, accountability mechanisms, remedies and redress, and enforcement measures. Taking these elements seriously at the local and national level will assist in developing housing policies and law that are consistent with international and national human rights obligations. This study makes a number of concrete recommendations for Indonesian legislators and policy-makers to fully integrate these elements into their housing policies and law.

Worldwide, millions of the most deprived people live in slums with a lack of access to adequate water, hygiene, and sanitation. Inadequate housing and living conditions increase vulnerability to other problems. For example, people living on the river banks in Jakarta, Indonesia regularlyexperience flooding due to adverse environmental conditions. Not only do river bank settlements suffer from floods but also other settlements as well as offices in Jakarta encounter similar effects. These regular floods cost billions of Indonesian Rupiahs(IDR) in damages annually. As part of flood prevention programmes, the Jakarta government evacuated and emptied the river bank settlements and relocated the residents to rented, public high-rise housing provided by the municipality. This article will not address the legal issues of the relocation. Rather, it will examine whether relocation and resettlement due to development programmes can be addressed from a different perspective, one which focuses on human rights as a means to eliminate poverty. This research will also investigate the available accountability mechanisms at both the international and national level. Furthermore, these mechanisms are assessed to determine whether they can be employed to address the effect of development programmes which disproportionally affect people living on river banks. This study uses the classic legal research method, i.e. the normative legal method, to answer the research questions. In addition, the human rights-based approach is employed in assessing the regulation and policies adopted by the Indonesian authorities. The final part of this article provides conclusions and recommendations for policymakers to address the societal problems by employing the human rights approach in tackling poverty and reducing the negative impacts of developments.

This article analyses if, and how, the international right to housing obliges states to protect the victims of justifiable evictions, particularly evictions due to rent arrears. It concerns a comparative analysis of practices in one Asian and one European jurisdiction: Indonesia and the Netherlands. The study juxtaposes measures adopted by each of the governments, regarding their obligations to protect tenants from eviction and to rehouse them post-eviction. As the use of rental accommodation in Indonesia is increasing, a comparison with the Netherlands – where rental accommodation has a prominent role – is beneficial. One significant finding is there is a grey area regarding the protection of people who are evicted due to rent arrears. Although states should protect these victims in the same way as they do people affected by (urban) development, it is unclear how far this protection should go. In the absence of parameters for such protection, the two countries have adopted measures to prevent victims from becoming homeless. The Netherlands protects tenants by providing legal mechanisms against the threat of eviction, and by providing adequate shelter for such victims. Indonesia also shows its intention to protect tenants, by adopting an ad hoc policy to help tenants pay their rent. These measures both seem to be effective, yet there is still a pivotal need for more structured frameworks.

While the decentralised system adhered to by Indonesia has allowed the central government to delegate its affairs to local governments and has brought benefits for democracy, several issues are open for improvement. One of the areas allocated to local governments is housing and settlements. There are indications that in some cases the local governments fail to provide access to public housing for outsiders, who are also vulnerable to eviction and resettlement. This article discusses legal regulations and examples of housing policy at the national level. Moreover, it assesses general practices of four Indonesian local governments: Jakarta, Surabaya, Jogjakarta and Surakarta, concerning access to public housing for outsiders. The article investigates whether the four Indonesian local governments unintentionally facilitate indirect discrimination or legally limit the right to housing for the purpose of promoting the general welfare. The analysis is based on the prohibition of indirect discrimination related to the right to housing in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (icescr), General Comments and Concluding Observations.