When Land Administration Becomes Dispossession: The Crisis of Justice within Indonesia’s ATR/BPN System -By Farah Fariha Putri

Indonesia’s land administration system should be one that gives predictability. Instead, however, it’s a source of conflict. The place where the contradiction resides most clearly is in the institutional structure of the Ministry of Land Management (known as Kementerian Agraria dan Tata Ruang/Badan Pertanahan Nasional), whose original purpose was to secure people’s land rights but which has come to be associated as well with their deterioration. Instead of a guardian providing legal certainty, it too many cases has become a tool for dispossession.

This is not a rhetorical exaggeration: it is the substance of fact. Farmers and urban residents find themselves locked in an ever growing number of disputes. Indigenous peoples are even worse off. Except for large estates where the issue at stake is chiefly whether or not to engage in agriculture, most conflicts in the country do not come to an end once they are started. Deeds issued by the state, once seen as the last word in ownership rights, now have their authenticity routinely disputed. Up to several deeds can exist for the same plot of land. Elsewhere, land which communities have long occupied is suddenly altered in status, transferred to other parties or even claimed by various means under obscure administrative procedures. So the final result has been to introduce a system where there is law but no justice.

The crisis is caused by one basic contradiction: Indonesia’s land administration system is continually moving but fundamentally empty. Such programs as mass land certification are hailed as major milestones in reform. But certification without rigorous verification has only served to escalate the frequency of disputes. Rather than preventing conflict, the system is now on an assembly line for producing it – transforming administrative actions into legal weapons.

Worse yet, the “land mafia” is deeply entrenched in many Indonesian institutions. Networks of operators, officials, and legal intermediaries find and exploit holes in documentation and data integration. This isn’t something occasional or sporadic; it is a syndrome. When a record of rights to land can be shaped, copied, or applied in different ways depending on who does the using, then the organization itself is open to being captured offensively. In this case where law is subject to power not, public outcomes become determined by those with control.

Added problems arise from the piecemeal governance.Over seen both by ATM(Consultant for Agriculture & Agrarian Reform) and BPN(National Land agency) Indonesia’s land, too, intersects internationally with the local timber officer, local governments and national development agents. Although a single plot may be simultaneously Offical Land, forest in waiting and earmaked for infrastructure, the overlapping jurisdictions thus created result in gray area thinking whose symmetry guarantees only to tip toward those who are weakest the lumpen people themselves. Administrative complexities are a useful hook for dispossession.Nowhere is this more obvious than in activities justified as “nation-building”. In the name of the ‘public interest’, land seized has become increasing–often with governments cut down to foot the bill. ATR/BPN have a central part in such processes, from certification through release of land into the community’s Ownership. But when the agency becomes more tied up with development needs than protecting rights, it is no longer neutral. It becomes a ringleader in discrimination.Through arbitrary treatment, it is the people who suffer most from this situation approved by law. At their harshest cutting edge are the sufferings of local communities: although constitutionally recognized, land rights of native peoples at best pinch hit in common law. Until now, there have been few or zero mechanisms for regularizing pet cemetery land. They tend to be slow, and ridden with obstacles administrations love to put people in. Meanwhile, plantations, mines and infrastructure keep on marching closer. It’s a case of, ok on paper these customary rights exist, but in practice enforcement is difficult. Digitization, often seen as a panacea, brings new risks. Electronic land certificates and online systems mean convenience, but if there is no transparency or responsibility behind these things then all they really do is solidify the existing flaws. Badien writes that if data collection is not open to ordinary members of the public, if there is no supervision on its carrying out and when oversight remains weak hard work encrypted digital coding may just obscure its opposite. A corrupt analogue operation doesn’t go straight just because it goes digital, it goes faster. What this picture emerges is not only incompetence in administration, but a deeper justice emergency. Land isn’t just some economic good, it’s a livelihood, an indentity and a dignity. If land administration fails, the result isn’t going to be just theoretical ‘down at heel management’ but actual evictions, strife and gangsterization.

Indisputable norms are embodied in international human rights law. These include The right to property, the right to adequate housing, and the rights of Indigenous peoples. They are not ‘optional policy considerations.’ They are legally binding obligations. Nevertheless, Indonesia’s current land administration framework has great difficulty in turning these principles into reality. The contrast between law and reality is no longer just the result of chance–it is systemic.

Reform must be radical today, not gradual. First Indonesia must set up a unified and transparent land data system that eliminates overlapping assertions of ownership. Second, oversight powers of State cadres should be strengthened so as to prevent corruption within ATR/BPN, and make the entire system more transparent. Third land certification must shift from formalistic forms of administrative certification to substantive verification. The legal titles must correspond to the actual rights. And fourth, Indigenous land rights must be given full recognition and incorporated into the national system, rather than being treated as peripheral exceptions.

In particular, we need to redefine the function of land administration. It isn’t just a tool to speed up development at any cost or to facilitate transactions. It’s a public institution with a constitutional duty: to protect rights.

Until the transformation just described takes place, Indonesia’s land administration system will keep on creating the very insecurity that it claims to cure. There will be more certificates of title, but more conflicts. Development advances, yet justice retreats.

Most dangerous of all, such an illusion will persist—namely, that legality is still being served, whereas in reality it is being systematically subverted.

For when land administration becomes an instrument of dispossession, the problem is not administrative but constitutional.

Farah Fariha Putri, SH, MH

Alumni of The Faculty of Law University 17 August 1945 Surabaya and Member of Law Firm Victorious Indonesia