Legal experts debating changes on birth citizenship

Legal experts debating changes on birth citizenship

Fitri Wulandari, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Legal experts are currently debating a change to the 1958 Law
on Citizenship which would allow a child born in Indonesia to
obtain citizenship regardless of the parents' nationality.

A working committee, comprised of legal experts and members of
the National Commission on Human Rights, is proposing the
principle of jus soli, which determines citizenship by place of
birth, be applied as the primary consideration.

The changes, which committee members said would be submitted
to the House of Representatives as an alternative to a draft
drawn up at the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights, would
effectively combine jus soli with the currently applied principle
of jus sanguinis which determines citizenship based on the
parents' nationality.

The current law stipulates that a child born in Indonesia will
have the citizenship of the father who was legally wed to the
mother.

However, a child is not accorded Indonesian citizenship if the
father is a foreigner, regardless of the fact that the mother may
be an Indonesian citizen.

The only exceptions are when the child has an Indonesian
mother but no legal bonds with the father or when the legal
father has no citizenship.

Another special case would be if the child is born here from
unknown parents.

The law often adversely affects Indonesian mothers who, for
example due to immigrations complications faced by their foreign
spouse, have had their child deported out of the country along
with the husband.

"Inter-nationality marriages often cause abandoned children,"
committee member Suma Mihardja told The Jakarta Post on
Wednesday.

"We're concerned about a possible drastic increase in these
cases in the future," added Suma from the Jakarta Legal Aid
Institute.

Under the draft law the only exception to obtaining automatic
citizenship at birth is if the parents were, at the time of the
child's birth, stationed in Indonesia on a diplomatic mission.

The working committee was established a year ago in a drive to
eradicate what are perceived as discriminating laws. It gained
momentum particularly with the news that the government at last
had decided to begin considering changes to Law No. 62/1958.

The core of the committee is comprised of members from three
major groups -- the Human Rights Commission, the Anti-
Discrimination Movement, and the National Unity Communication
Forum.

However, members of the committee did not say when their draft
would be submitted to the House, saying further fine-tuning would
be required.

The current draft being debated at the Ministry of Justice
still adheres to a jus sanguinis principle with reliance on the
citizenship of the father as the primary consideration.

On the question of a child of Indonesian parentage born abroad
and being accorded citizenship of the country of birth, the
working committee proposed that the child be allowed to maintain
dual citizenship.

The child, upon reaching 18 years of age, may declare the
citizenship to the country of choice.

However there were no major changes by the committee on the
question of not recognizing dual citizenship for adults.

Meanwhile the only major proposed change with regard to the
requirements of foreigners obtaining citizenship, is the lowering
of the minimum age of an applicant from 21 to 18.

Applicants accepted for citizenship here will automatically
lose their previous citizenship, if they had one.

The committee also underscored the waiver for Indonesians of
foreign descent here who were previously required to show
official papers on evidence of citizenship (SBKRI).

Senior government officials concede that lower ranking
bureaucrats and even some in the private sector continue to
request such papers when dealing with Indonesians of Chinese,
Arab or Indian descent, despite the abolition of such a
requirement in a 1996 Presidential Decree.

The committee stressed that local identity cards or birth
certificates should suffice.

The remarks were made as ethnic Chinese were often exploited
in such matters, committee member and lawyer Frans Hendra Winarta
said.

"There is a reluctance among bureaucrats to exercise such laws
as it is a profitable source of corruption," he said on Wednesday
during a discussion to publicize the committee's draft law.

With the advent of the reform era and the relaxing of
restrictions against ethnic Chinese, the government has pledged
to expedite citizenship applications for those here.

Last year the government said it was in the process of
granting citizenship to nearly 140,000 stateless ethnic Chinese
in Indonesia.

Allegations of institutionalized discrimination against ethnic
Chinese however, persist.

Recently the Chinese-Indonesian Association (INTI) said that
no less than 60 laws and regulations were discriminatory to
certain ethnic groups, religions or beliefs. These include some
dating back to 1849 and others as recent as 1988.