O

nly 17 percent of poor people in Indonesia can access courts to settle civil registry issues, which can create future problems as the citizens, who do not possess the proper legal documents, look for schools, jobs and healthcare, a survey has found.

At a signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the Indonesian Supreme Court and the Australian Federal Court and the Australian Family Court on Thursday, the analyst in charge of the survey said Indonesia's courts remains inaccessible to most poor people, who simply cannot meet the costs.

"Only 17 percent of Indonesia's poor have the ability to bring their cases to the courts, and in poorer areas like NTT (East Nusa Tenggara) the number is under 10 percent," Cate Sumner, a researcher on Australia's Judicial Reform Panel, told justices at the Supreme Court building.

The survey, which polled 2,500 respondents nationwide, found that most poor people could not afford to pay court fees nor transportation costs to go to the courts.

Take the example of divorce cases. The survey said the average cost of settlement is between Rp 760,000 (US$76) and Rp 1 million, excluding transportation, which can add an additional Rp 400,000 to Rp 720,000.

About 80 percent of the country's population lives below the poverty line. Data from the past three years shows 50 percent of Indonesia's citizens earn less than Rp 600,000 per month.

Divorce cases account for 220,000, or 94 percent of the legal battles fought in Indonesia every year. Some 97 percent of these cases are taken to Religious Courts.

"As a result, 90 percent of divorces among the poor are unknown to and undocumented by the courts. This affects children who may be born without being able to obtain a proper birth certificate, causing later problems when they register for schooling or any government social programs," Sumner said.

She further cited data from UNICEF, which concluded that 60 percent of Indonesian children do not have birth certificates. In the poorer provinces, the number is closer to 80 percent.

The cost of birth certificates, which ranges between Rp 500,000 and Rp 670,000, exacerbates the problem.

Sumner said the solution would be for the country's judiciary to completely eradicate court expenses for poor people, further proposing mobile courts, so the poor would not have to travel to settle legal disputes.

In response, Supreme Court Chief Justice Harifin Tumpa said the Supreme Court had ordered the lower courts to establish mobile courts to help poor people document their civil status.