Building Human Rights Clinics that are Close to the Community

Jakarta (ANTARA) - A vast amount of knowledge regarding human rights is born within universities. Research, journals, discussions, policy critiques, and human rights education continue to evolve.

Behind this, there is one question we must begin to ask: how close is all that knowledge to the communities actually facing human rights issues?

This question is vital when discussing the future of the Human Rights Study Centre, or PUSHAM. PUSHAM must certainly remain an independent academic space. It must possess the freedom to research, develop thought, test government policies, and even deliver critiques when such policies are deemed in need of improvement.

Nevertheless, independence should not mean being distanced from societal issues. Rather, the next challenge is how to make the human rights knowledge developing on campus increasingly relevant to everyday life. This is where developing human rights clinics, along with human rights assistance and advocacy units, becomes essential as part of the PUSHAM ecosystem.

Being Closer

Imagine an individual visiting a campus because they feel they have received unfair treatment in public services. They may not necessarily know whether the issue is a legal, administrative, discriminatory, or public service matter, or even a human rights issue.

In many circumstances, the public does not immediately require a lawyer. They first need someone willing to listen, help them understand their problem, explain their rights, and indicate which doors they should knock on.

This is where a human rights clinic can operate, serving as a space for initial consultation, education, problem identification, documentation, and referral. It is not a space to promise that all issues will be resolved by the university. Instead, the clinic helps the public understand the nature of their problem, the rights involved, and which institutions have the authority to handle it. Such a function is crucial because a key issue in human rights protection is not just the availability of state mechanisms, but whether the public knows about and can access them.

Not a Legal Aid Institute

This boundary must be clear from the outset. Human rights clinics and assistance units are not built to replace legal aid institutes (LBH). LBH possesses a tradition, competence, and a vital function in providing legal aid, particularly when a matter must enter the legal process or litigation.

Human rights clinics have a different point of entry. They can operate much earlier. When a consultation reveals that an individual requires assistance, the human rights assistance and advocacy unit can help with communication with agencies, assist in accessing services, facilitate complaints, help with administrative processes, perform mediation or facilitation within its capacity, and connect the public with authorised institutions.

If a matter requires legal aid or litigation, networks with LBH, advocate organisations, or other legal aid institutions come into play. Thus, institutional competition is avoided.

The human rights clinic helps interpret the problem. The assistance and advocacy unit helps the public navigate the resolution. The LBH works when the matter requires legal assistance according to its competence.

This pattern is well-known in legal aid and policy advocacy practices in various countries: complaints that arrive individually, when collected and analysed together, often reveal structural patterns that are not visible from a single case.

The same principle applies to human rights clinics. For example, over a certain period, a human rights clinic at a university might receive many consultations on a similar theme—such as citizens in a certain region struggling to access specific population documents.

Initially, each complaint may appear to be an isolated individual issue. Once these cases are documented and read in aggregate, it becomes clear that the problem is no longer about a single person, but rather about overly complex procedures, unsynchronised regulations between agencies, or specific groups of people consistently facing the same barriers. At that point, a complaint transforms into knowledge. This is where the strength of PUSHAM as an academic institution becomes profoundly important.