Many Indonesians—primarily those living in rural areas—still follow customary law (adat). The precise rules and processes of that adat differ significantly from place to place, even within short distances. This chapter shows that for many decades, adat has been subservient to national law. State-made law overrode it, leaving it applicable only in a very small proportion of cases where no national law applied, where judges could apply it as ‘living law’. Even in these cases, many judges ignored adat or distorted it when deciding cases. The 1945 Constitution was amended in 2000 to require the state to formally recognize and respect customary law, as practised in traditional communities. The Constitutional Court has given effect to this in various judicial review cases, as have some statutes enacted in the past decade or so. However, this constitutional and statutory ‘protection’ has been impeded in practice by requirements for traditional communities to be formally ‘recognized’ by their local governments, many of whom have been unresponsive to calls for recognition.
Extensão universitária e certificação orgânica: o caso das comunidades tradicionais no alto rio Urupadí, Maués-AM / University extension and organic certification: the case of traditional communities in the Urupadí upper river, Maués-AM
