Legal Pluralism, Human Rights and the Right to Vote

The goal of this article is to explore the clash between international human rights law and a legal pluralist framework in the case of the noken system and also to investigate potential solutions to the clash. Elections in Indonesia are generally founded on the principle of direct, universal, free, secret, honest and fair voting. There is a notable exception in the Province of Papua, where tribes in the Central Mountains area are following the noken system. Under this system, votes are allocated to the candidate(s) based on the decision of the big man or the consensus of the tribe. The Indonesian Constitutional Court has accepted this practice as reflecting the customs of the local population. However, this form of voting seems to be contrary to the right to vote under international human rights law, since article 25(b) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights stipulates that elections shall be held genuinely by universal suffrage and secret ballot to guarantee the free will of the electors. Consequently, the case of the noken system in Papua reflects an uneasy clash between a legal pluralist approach and universal human rights

Comparative law · Human rights · International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights · International human rights law · Law and economics · Legal pluralism · Legal realism · Political science · Politics · Reservation of rights · Right to property · Sociology · Suffrage · Tribe · Voting · Indonesian Legal and Regulatory Studies · Law · Legal and Policy Analysis in Indonesia · Legal Studies and Policies

• The constitutional court and democracy in Indonesia

  Simon Butt•The constitutional court and…•2015

  Add to list