Jakarta-PR: I Gusti Agung Sumanatha, S.H., M.H., the Chairperson of the Civil Chamber officially opened a regional workshop concerning Consumers’ Protection and  Working Group on Judicial Education & Training (WG-JET) on Thursday, 22 February 2024 in Jakarta. This event was conducted for two days on 22-23 February 2024 and attended by 10 delegations of ASEAN countries consisting of supreme justices, judges, and legal practitioners. It was a cooperation between the Research and Development Agency for Legal and Judiciary Training of the Supreme Court of the Republic of Indonesia and Philippine Judicial Academy.

In the opening ceremony, the Chairperson of the Civil Chamber stated that the Council of ASEAN Chief Justices (CACJ) has become the essential platform and resource for ASEAN. Therefore, he was sure that judges and apparatuses in ASEAN Judicial are aware of many legal institutions and instruments of ASEAN, moreover on consumers’ protection.

“I believe we may internalize the ASEAN consumers’ protection scheme through this working group on judicial education and training, and find the opportunity to increase judicial capacity for settling consumers’ cases through the better and superior judicial procedure,” Agung said.

He expected the information delivered from each other's judges and the experts in these events will improve their ability to settle any judiciary duties and improve education and judiciary training.

Hery Mulyono, S.H., M.H., the Head Research and Development Agency for Legal and Judiciary Training also expected that the working group in this meeting may find the purpose and opportunity to strengthen the Central Research and Judiciary Training in ASEAN territory, which will reciprocally contribute to strengthen the competency of ASEAN judges and courts.

This event was moderated by Arya Sujudi, the Reform Assistance Team of the Indonesian Supreme Court presenting three speakers Syamsul Ma’arif, S.H., L.L.M., the Supreme Court Justice of Civil Chamber of the Supreme Court of the Republic of Indonesia, Dr. Thang Van Luong the Assistant Director, Competition, Consumer Protection, HKI, ASEAN Secretariat, and Dr. Nadja Alexander the Director of International Dispute Resolution of Singapore from the Singapore Management University.

For information, according to the Bangkok Declaration of 2019, CACJ has agreed on the Work Agenda of the Working Group on Judicial Education & Training (Work Agenda of WG-JET) for 2020-2025. The Work Agenda is an explanation from the Strategic Plan of 2019-2025 which will identify the priority and approach of WG-JET for running the training and education program.

The Strategic Plan of 2019-2025 and the Work Agenda of 2020-2025 presented that one of the topics that was proposed for the training was related to business and commercial law, especially in the consumer protection category. Consumer protection is an important topic to be discussed and updated due to the massive digitalization era. An example could be the utilization of online devices/gadgets in a settlement of a consumer's case, either in a judicial or non-judicial mechanism.

Therefore, the Supreme Court of the Republic of Indonesia as the Co-Chair (Joint Chief) of WG-JET CACJ initiated a regional workshop by inviting the representative from CACJ to discuss the consumer protection topic and the action plan to Build up the Judiciary Role to Strengthen the Consumer Protection in ASEAN territory. Besides the Workshop, the Annual Meeting of WG-JET CACJ will be held.

During the workshop, the attendants shared their insights, recommendations, knowledge, and comments to wrap up the recommendation which will be jointly agreed upon and legalized to affirm the commitment and possession of the action plan.

Besides the regional workshop on Consumer Protection, this event also discussed the recommendation of an action plan that was necessary for increasing the capacity of CACJ in the essential consumer protection category as follows:

• Development of consumer protection in ASEAN;
• Small claims court for consumers;
• Resolution of online dispute for consumer case.

This event also discussed the status and improvement of the implementation of the Work Agenda of 2020-2025 and the opportunity to implement the education program and training in ASEAN territory in the future.

Those recommendations will be customized to the frameworks, visions, missions, and objectives of the Work Agenda of 2020-2025 and Strategic Plan of 2018-2025.

In the last agenda, the delegations visited the District Court of North Jakarta. (azh/RS/photo:Alf&Sno/Translated by AF/LHS/Reviewed by azh/RS)