Reformulating Legal Protection for Vulnerable Women and Children in Indonesia

A Rechtsstaat-Based Framework

Abstract

Women and children remain exposed to forms of violence, exploitation, discrimination, and unequal access to remedies despite Indonesia's increasingly dense framework of protective legislation. This article examines whether that framework satisfies the substantive requirements of Indonesia's constitutional identity as a rechtsstaat (negara hukum), and how legal protection policy should be reformulated when the principal deficit lies not in the absence of norms but in the architecture of implementation. Using normative or doctrinal legal research, the study combines statute and conceptual approaches. It analyzes constitutional provisions, legislation on child protection, domestic violence, marriage, and sexual violence, recent implementing regulations adopted between 2024 and 2025, Indonesia's obligations under CEDAW and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and relevant rule-of-law and vulnerability scholarship. The analysis shows that Indonesia has made substantial normative progress, including a more integrated implementation framework under the Sexual Violence Crimes Law. Nevertheless, persistent problems remain: sectoral fragmentation, uneven inter-agency coordination, territorial disparities in service capacity, barriers to reporting and remedies, a predominantly reactive orientation, weak interoperability of protection data, and insufficient mechanisms for institutional accountability. The article proposes a four-pillar reformulation: integrated protection governance, prevention-centered and digitally responsive measures, vulnerability- and intersectionality-sensitive protection, and measurable state accountability. It argues that a substantive rechtsstaat requires protection to operate as an enforceable institutional system rather than as a collection of formally valid statutes.