International Law

Introducing a co-blogger

Posted on August 21, 2007
Dear friends, relatives, neighbors, readers...I'd like to introduce you to a new co-blogger from Jakarta's "legal underworld". He told me that he's going to blog some -- uhm -- sensitive issues on Indonesia's law enforcement. I know that you are longing to know what this person will write...

Water war is a class war

Posted on August 20, 2007
That one is column at The Globalist. The author wrote:For some, water is effectively granted as a right, provided at low cost by the state. For many others ? usually those who can least afford it ? it is treated as a commodity that must be bought. Access to water is in fact much more closely tied to social class than to climate...

"Your" water, "their" tribunal. BITs in water privatizations

Posted on August 20, 2007
You don't believe me? There is more than one case, really. I want to get back to that Tanzanian water privatization case, as reported by the Guardian:Lawyers for Tanzania's government, whose participation in such a tribunal process is among the terms of a bilateral investment treaty signed with Britain in 1994, argue that Biwater failed in its contractual obligations, performing worse than its inefficient state-owned predecessor...

Company Law to be Judicially Reviewed

Posted on August 19, 2007
Still an unconfirmed news (will be confirmed if they log their case on the Court's registrar). Chairman of Apindo Sofjan Wanandi planned to submit a Judicial Review of the newly enacted Company Law to the Constitutional Court. He argued (link in Bahasa) that the Merger Rules on the new law -- which obligates companies to announce its merger decision prior to general meeting of shareholders-- was unfair...

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What 'natural resources'? CSR clause in the new Company Law

Posted on August 18, 2007
Just to start the conversation, there's a nice article from CSR Asia discussing the controversy surrounding the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) clause under the newly enacted Company Law. Here's a snippet:Indonesian company law states that companies with an impact on natural resources must implement CSR which is to be budgeted for as a cost...

Some note on Indonesian Investment Law

Posted on August 18, 2007
FDI.net hosted an article on the newly amended Investment Law which may be good as a kickstart. You can download it here.Note: I have not throughly read the content myself. In any event, no guarantee on its accuracy.

The Tanzania Water Privatization Problem

Posted on August 18, 2007
Guardian issued an interesting article elaborating the Dar-es-Salam Water Privatization problem:At 11.30am on June 1 2005, three British expatriates were detained by the police in Tanzania. Cliff Stone, Michael Livermore and Roger Harrington were the senior managers at City Water, a consortium responsible for managing Dar es Salaam's water supply...

Tragedy of the commons in water

Posted on July 27, 2007
BBC had an interesting article on the debate as to whether market forces would be able to manage water:The editor of the book, Kendra Okonski, a director of the UK-based International Policy Network, says the solution is to give water a market value. "If we view water as a global common good, it means that we collectively own it and no one has the responsibility to look after it...

What kind of blogpost would you like to read?

Posted on July 23, 2007

Safeguarding a water contract

Posted on July 23, 2007
If you are representing a municipality or a central government, and you have to deal with water MNCs in concluding an agreement, what will you do? I wrote a paper on this issue for a conference held by the IELRC in Geneva, last April. Here's the abstract:Due to financial and technological reasons, water undertakings are often being conducted by large scale Multi National Corporations (MNC)...

Indonesia needs a good squatting law?

Posted on July 22, 2007
I have just watched Robert Neuwirth's presentation at the 2005 TED Talk. He explained that in 2030, there will be 2 billion squatters, or one in every people in the planet is a squatter. In his presentation, he explained some squatter laws in several countries, for example the 24-hour rule in Turkey which established that if a person manages to erect a building in 24 hours, they cannot be evicted without court orders...

Click-wrap agreement unenforceable in Secondlife

Posted on July 19, 2007
Last May I had an interesting discussions with Priyadi and others on the enforceability of Creative Commons license in Indonesia. In that previous post, I mentioned the example of Comb v PayPal (US District Court of San Jose), in which the Court find the agreement unenforceable...

The right to water must be explicitly stated in the Constitution

Posted on July 10, 2007
JP has just published my Article on the right to water today:Access to water is a fundamental human rightMohamad Mova Al 'Afghani, JakartaEnough has been said about the depletion of our supply of fresh water from industrialization, deforestation and climate change...

The New Negative List of Investment

Posted on July 06, 2007
Jakarta Post issued an editorial discussing the new investment's negative list: It's true these sectors -- telecommunications and insurance -- became more restrictive, with foreign ownership in telecommunication companies (telcos) now restricted to 65 percent for mobile services and 49 percent for fixed network, with the insurance industry at 80 percent...

Why are poor countries, poor? Corruption

Posted on July 02, 2007
Reason magazine published a good article explaining why poor countries will remain poor, taking the case of Cameroon:More important, why can't the Cameroonian people seem to do anything about it? Couldn't Cameroonian communities improve their schools? Wouldn't the benefits easily outweigh the costs? Couldn't Cameroonian businessmen build factories, license technology, seek foreign partners, and make a fortune? Evidently not...

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