Tuani Sondang Rejeki Marpaung, INDONESIA
About Tuani
Tuani is a lawyer working in the Legal Services Division of the Legal Aid Foundation of the Indonesian Women’s Association for Justice (LBH APIK) Jakarta. She provides assistance to women and child victims of violence and offers legal defense for women facing criminal and civil charges.
The Challenge
The Law on Child Criminal Justice Systems (UU SPPA) mandates the establishment of separate facilities for children to serve their sentences and stay temporarily during the judicial process. However, in practice, few such facilities are available. Instead, police, prosecutors, and judges often place children in adult detention centers and social rehabilitation institutes, violating the UU SPPA and the rights of children. The increasing number of children convicted in Indonesia highlights the urgency of addressing this issue.
The Innovation: “Bringing Access to Justice Closer to Justice-Seeking Communities”
Tuani’s project aimed to increase legal rights awareness among women and children, promote the implementation of LPKS and LPKA, and prevent the placement of children in adult-only detention centers. A major achievement was the creation of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Pondok Bambu Detention Center, which facilitated three online training sessions on the judicial process for 45 participating detainees. Paralegals initiated the establishment of a new legal aid post in a high-gender-based violence area, in collaboration with community leaders, to bring justice closer to victims. Tuani also signed an MoU with nine Probono Advocates to provide free legal aid to women and children, resulting in 80 women receiving free legal consultations by the project’s conclusion.
Tuani enhanced facilitator capacity by conducting two training sessions for Companions, Paralegals, and Advocates: the first on handling refugee cases, and the second on the development of the Draft RKUPH and its potential to marginalize vulnerable groups. To build professional capacity and increase legal awareness among the public, Tuani initiated a campaign video on juveniles in the criminal justice system. The video was used during advocate trainings and community visits, including one at an Islamic boarding school in Bogor, where it was screened for an audience of 120 people. Tuani estimates that the project’s rights awareness initiatives, including community visits and social media campaigns, reached a total of 4,055 people.