August 28, 2026 | 04:14 pm
The Balik Sepaku indigenous community challenges the IKN Law. “National interests” cannot be used to justify ignoring the rights of indigenous peoples.
THE Balik Sepaku indigenous community’s lawsuit against the Constitutional Court deserves support. Together with the Indigenous Peoples Alliance of the Archipelago (AMAN), they are challenging Law No. 3/2022 on the State Capital (IKN), which has yet to provide adequate guarantees for indigenous peoples’ rights.
The judicial review petition, filed on August 4, 2026, challenges Article 21 of the IKN Law. The article states that land administration and spatial planning in IKN must “take into account and provide protection for the individual or communal rights of indigenous peoples.” The petitioners argue that the provision does not provide sufficient guarantees for meaningful participation, particularly when development directly affects the land, territory, and resources that constitute their living space.
The issue is not merely a matter of wording. According to AMAN, IKN development has narrowed customary territories, restricted access to cultural sites, and caused flooding and clean water shortages. Projects carried out in the name of the national interest have instead put communities that have long lived in the area at risk of losing their living space.
The IKN case points to a broader problem: in development projects, indigenous peoples are often forced to bear the consequences of decisions affecting their territories. Yet the Constitution provides a clear basis for their protection. Article 28I, paragraph 3, of the 1945 Constitution states that cultural identities and the rights of traditional communities shall be respected.
Indigenous peoples should be involved in every policy-making process that could alter their land, territories, environment, and resources. Meaningful participation must be opened from the earliest stages of policy formulation. The principle of Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) is relevant in this context. It emphasizes that indigenous peoples’ consent must be given freely, without coercion, based on adequate information, and before projects affecting their land and territories are carried out.
The problem is that recognition of indigenous peoples’ rights remains far from complete. The government has indeed increased the number of customary forests formally recognized. As of April 2026, the Ministry of Forestry said it had designated 174 customary forests covering about 368,877 hectares and was targeting 1.4 million hectares by 2029. This progress is worth noting. But the target also demonstrates how much work the state still has to do to provide legal certainty to indigenous peoples.
The contrast is evident in the scale of certainty granted to various business activities. Concessions for the utilization of timber from natural forests covered about 19 million hectares in 2022. Mining business permit areas for minerals and coal covered about 9.11 million hectares in 2024. These figures demonstrate the stark disparity in the scale of certainty granted to business activities compared with the recognition of indigenous territories.
The government and the House of Representatives should not wait for the Constitutional Court’s ruling to amend the flawed IKN Law and restore the customary rights of the Balik Sepaku people. No development project, including one carried out in the name of the national interest, should force indigenous peoples to lose their living space.
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