The Effectiveness of the Customary Courts of the Bati Tribe Communities in the Resolution of Mining Conflicts

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6239-596-1_19How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Effectiveness; Bati Tribe Customary Courts; Settlement and mining conflicts

Abstract

The customary court is an institution within the customary law community that is informal and independent and functions as a judicial institution in resolving and deciding cases of violations of customary law. Customary courts are presided over by customary heads, tribal heads, clan heads, or specific religious figures. In reality, customary violations are not always committed by members of the alliance. In the development of investment, especially mining, many customary areas have mining potential. Mining companies based on permits from the government carry out mining exploration and exploitation of customary law communities in many practices unilaterally deciding on company actions through customary courts, it tends to cause disputes and even conflicts between customary law communities and companies, as is the case with the oil and gas mining business in cooperation with PT. Balam Energy Limited and PT. The Geophysical Prospecting Bureau (BGP) in sacred areas or those considered sacred by the Bati people in Maluku Province, without obtaining approval from the local community, the community through their customary courts then determined that the two companies had violated their customs and were given sanctions in the form of customary fines. Still, the company did not respond, causing conflict. This writing was carried out based on the socio-legal research method, namely an interdisciplinary approach which is a hybrid of a large study of legal studies and legal studies from a societal perspective that was born earlier, namely the legal anthropology approach, to achieve the goal, namely the existence of recognition in the form of regulations on the existence of indigenous peoples as well as recognition of their customary court institutions for parties outside the customary law community including companies in the mining business.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

Download article (PDF)

TY  - CONF
AU  - Nancy Silvana Haliwela
AU  - Mahrita Aprilya Lakburlawal
AU  - Boyke Lekipiouw
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/02/26
TI  - The Effectiveness of the Customary Courts of the Bati Tribe Communities in the Resolution of Mining Conflicts
BT  - Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Environmental Sciences, Agriculture, and Socioeconomics (ICESAS 2025
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 239
EP  - 263
SN  - 2468-5747
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6239-596-1_19
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6239-596-1_19
ID  - Haliwela2026
ER  -