Corporate Responsibility for Environmental Human Rights Violation: A Case Study of Indonesia

The volcano mudflow of 2006 in Sidoarjo, East Java was one of the most devastating environmental disasters in Indonesia. Many argue that it was the failure of PT. Lapindo during the drilling process but the verdict of the District Court of South Jakarta decided that it was a natural disaster. Environmental crime provision is stated in The Environmental Management Act 2009 No. 32 but this stipulation does not reduce the number of corporate environmental crimes as there are other factors involved such as enforcement. The protection of people's environmental human rights is also recognized under The Law of 1999 No. 39 on Human Rights. Regrettably, prosecuting corporate environmental crime from the angle of human rights is at a dead-lock due to the fact that the Indonesian Human Rights Court is only authorized to prosecute genocide crimes and crime against humanity. Nevertheless, the corporate sector should take the responsibility to restore the ecosystem where disasters have occurred. In view of this gap, some primary data, like statutes, regulations and international conventions; also secondary data such as articles, reports and news papers have been obtained from literature study and internet sources and are descriptively and qualitatively analyzed. This article aims to rationalise that the jurisdiction of the Indonesian Human Rights Court should include environmental crime in The Law of 2000 No. 26 in Human Rights Court and provide output for the decision makers in Indonesia to consider that environmental crime is a crime against humanity.