Restitution and Compensation for Victims of Human Trafficking After Law Number 3 of 2026

Shafira Saodana, Siti Zubaidah, Rafika Nur, Syahrul Ago, Asti Dwiyanti

Abstract


Indonesian law has recognised restitution for trafficking victims since 2007, but the right has rarely resulted in actual payment. Law Number 3 of 2026 on the Protection of Witnesses and Victims (State Gazette 2026 No. 59), in force since 20 May 2026, was preceded by the 2025 Code of Criminal Procedure (Law Number 20 of 2025), in force since 2 January 2026, which had already extended to all crimes the restitution-enforcement model first enacted for sexual-violence crimes in 2022 and granted every victim a right to state compensation where the offender cannot pay restitution. This article examines which elements of the 2026 framework are genuinely new in Law Number 3 of 2026 and which procedural steps still lack a legal basis. Through doctrinal analysis and a provision-by-provision comparison at three points in time, it finds that binding duties to notify victims and to facilitate loss calculation, pre-judgment seizure as security for restitution, and a general compensation right became applicable to most trafficking victims on 2 January 2026; Law Number 3 of 2026 restates rather than creates them. Its genuinely new elements are narrower: the express naming of trafficking victims as compensation beneficiaries (Article 23(1)), a recovery programme where seized assets cannot cover the restitution owed, new assistance rights, and the authority of the Witness and Victim Protection Agency (LPSK) to use a Victim Endowment Fund. Read together, the two laws still do not specify who initiates a compensation claim, how and when the offender’s inability to pay is established, which institution pays, or how compensation relates to substitute imprisonment and recovery programmes. The article proposes an analytical model of layered and parallel recovery pathways to guide the pending implementing regulations and the harmonisation of Supreme Court Regulation Number 1 of 2022.


Keywords


Trafficking In Persons; Victim; Restitution; Compensation; Victim Recovery.

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References


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DOI: https://doi.org/10.33756/jelta.v19i2.41762

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