Ethical and legal aspects of disaster response under Indonesian legal system

Centre for Adaptation and Resilience Environmental Design Studies, Parahyangan Catholic University (Faculty of Law), Jl. Ciumbuleuit No. 94 Bandung, 40141, Indonesia

^* Corresponding author: idasusanti_mg@yahoo.com

Abstract

Indonesia is a vulnerable country to disasters. Because almost all islands in Indonesia has the volcanoes, Indonesia is in the ring of fire, which potentially triggers a volcano eruption disaster. Moreover, earthquake, flood, tsunami, landslides regularly occur in Indonesia. It is very important to the response to such disasters. Recently, many regulations have been issued by the government, yet many unjust or indecent treatment have been experienced by displaced persons or the victims of disasters. Some illustrations concerning how bad legal position of disasters’ victims, especially their private rights, will be explored. It is common that in a contract, a natural disaster will be considered as a force majeure. A legal consequence of this condition is, the disasters’ victims must defray or restore the damage by themselves. It could be very unfair or inhumane because, after the disaster usually, many victims lose their capacity to perform their previous legal obligation. In this issue, the law fails to protect, because legal solution could be formally legitimate but substantially unfair. In this case, ethical consideration must be endorsed, for increasing their capacity to recover from the disaster. This paper describes disaster responses in Indonesian’s legal system, especially in the context to protect displaced persons or victims of disasters; and to explore justification to use legal ethics to protect them, in case legal protection fails to provide substantive justice for disasters’ victims.