Land Law Initiative
Land-related problems are a major source of chronic poverty and instability in the Indonesian countryside – problems that include widespread landlessness, inefficient land markets, poorly implemented land registration systems, ill-defined land rights and resulting social conflict, and poor natural resource management. Poorly conceived and poorly drafted land laws do not adequately address these ills.

In June 2001, RDI launched the Land Law Initiative in cooperation with the National Land Agency and the University of Indonesia Faculty of Law to develop land-related laws and improve the local legislative drafting capacity. The initiative is funded by a USAID grant and RDI matching funds. Project Director Robert Mitchell was based in Jakarta during the first year of the project, and now directs the work from Seattle. RDI maintains an office in Jakarta, staffed by a full-time local project assistant, Akhmad Safik.

The primary thrust of RDI’s current work is assisting the National Land Agency with revisions to important government regulations on land reform and land registration.

Land Reform.  RDI is working closely with the National Land Agency to replace Government Regulation No. 224/1961 “On Land Reform.” This represents the first time in 40 years that the Government of Indonesia has taken a practical look at improving land reform legislation. The new draft would greatly expand the types of land that can be redistributed, include the rural poor within the class of land recipients, and provide a more practical “bottom-up” process for initiating and conducting land redistribution that considers preferences of local communities. RDI is working to ensure that the revised regulation will provide a practical methodology for resolving land conflicts regarding large plantations and other government-sponsored agricultural projects, allowing local communities to regain access to agricultural lands taken by the government in years past. RDI is also encouraging the Government of Indonesia to distribute land to poor rural families in the form of pekarangan (house-and-garden) microplots on which the families can reside and produce food to supplement diets and incomes. The proposal is analyzed in a paper, “Concept for Land Reform on Java” (May 2002). View this paper (.pdf).

Land Registration.  RDI is working with government drafters to prepare a comprehensive revision of Government Regulation No. 24/1997 “On Land Registration.” RDI recommends that registration requirements be simplified to bring the benefits of registration to more rural citizens—benefits that include increased tenure security, increased land value, and an enhanced ability to access credit markets. Planned revisions would increase protections to citizens, reduce costs and delays for registration of land ownership and land transactions, and provide redress to citizens who suffer loss as the result of avoidable mistakes.

RDI is also encouraging the National Land Agency to address deficiencies in laws and regulations related to public acquisition of land, clarification of private rights to land, and protection of communal land rights of traditional communities.

Work on revising land legislation is made more complicated by the fact that Indonesia remains deeply in the throes of a national initiative to decentralize government functions to 300-odd kabupatans “regencies). The decentralization creates uncertainty in many areas, and its effects on land administration are difficult to predict. It is not even clear whether the basic framework for defining land rights will continue to be uniform throughout Indonesia. Nor is it clear what mechanisms might be used to ensure that any national land administration policy is implemented uniformly at the local level.

Building Legislative Drafting Capacity.  Under this program, RDI has also arranged training in legislative drafting techniques for 20 officials and university lecturers. That training—conducted by Professors and and Robert Seidman of Boston University School of Law—is already showing results in the improved quality of legislative drafting at the National Land Agency.

Women’s Rights to Land.  During July 2002, RDI attorney Jennifer Brown conducted field work to examine protection of women’s rights to land, the findings of which are summarized in the report “Registration of Land and Women’s Land Rights on Java” (August 2002; a more recent version of this paper has been published in the Pacific Law and Policy Journal, Volume 12, No. 3 (May 2003)). View this paper (.pdf). RDI found that Javanese custom generally recognizes and protects women’s rights to land, including rights to marital joint property. The report includes recommendations for revising existing registration and land transfer procedures to improve safeguards for marital joint property rights.

For more information about this program, contact Robert Mitchell at robertm@rdiland.org

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