Justice at the Margins of the Archipelago: Access to Legal Aid for Minority Communities in Eastern Indonesia
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.65815/hpnkhz15Keywords:
legal aid, access to justice, minority communities, Eastern Indonesia, socio-legal studiesAbstract
Access to justice remains uneven across Indonesia, particularly for minority communities living in geographically remote and socioeconomically disadvantaged regions. This article examines the structural barriers faced by minority communities in accessing legal aid in Eastern Indonesia. The study focuses on geographical isolation, limited legal infrastructure, linguistic barriers, economic disadvantage, and institutional capacity as interconnected dimensions of exclusion. Using a socio-legal methodology, the research combines analysis of the legal framework governing legal aid with selected regional experiences and documented cases involving vulnerable and minority communities. The article argues that formal entitlement to legal aid does not necessarily produce meaningful access to justice when services are physically inaccessible, culturally inappropriate, or institutionally insufficient. The analysis reveals that conventional legal-aid models tend to treat access primarily as a question of eligibility and funding, while paying insufficient attention to geography, culture, language, and community-specific vulnerabilities. The study proposes an expanded conception of legal aid based on substantive accessibility, including community-based legal services, mobile legal assistance, culturally competent representation, and stronger cooperation between state institutions and civil society organizations. It concludes that legal aid should be understood as an essential component of minority justice rather than merely a procedural benefit available after a dispute arises. The article contributes to access-to-justice scholarship by connecting legal aid policy with territorial inequality and minority protection in geographically peripheral regions.
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