Constitutional law expert from Gadjah Mada University Dr. Yance Arizona assessed that the Draft Law on Indigenous Peoples needs to be re-drafted with a new, more relevant draft in order to be able to answer the complexity of legal issues currently faced by indigenous peoples.
"If we use the old draft, this problem will not be resolved, so it is necessary to draft a new bill in accordance with developments at the national and regional levels," said Yance in his statement in Yogyakarta, Saturday.
According to him, many articles in the old draft have not been able to resolve the problem of overlapping sectoral regulations, such as those that occur between customary law and regulations in the forestry, plantation and mining sectors.
Therefore, he suggested that the re-drafting of the bill be carried out using a codification approach using the omnibus method.
"The codification approach through the omnibus method as an alternative, so that sectoral laws that overlap with indigenous communities can be collected and harmonized," he said.
In addition, Yance also asked for a more participatory legislative process that reaches indigenous communities who often do not have adequate access to information.
According to him, meaningful participation is not just a formality, but active involvement from the planning stage to evaluation.
The government, he said, needs to adopt a multilingual approach and involve local facilitators so that indigenous peoples' voices are truly represented in the legislative process.
