Exploring the Meaning of Justice Through the Lived Experiences of Human Rights Violation Victims: A Phenomenological Study in the Indonesian Legal System
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Abstract
Justice systems are often assumed to be neutral and impartial structures for redress, yet victims of human rights violations frequently experience legal processes as disempowering and alienating. In the post-reform Indonesian legal context (1998–2023), research has explored how victims themselves interpret and emotionally navigate biased legal systems. What remains underexamined is the subjective meaning of justice as lived by victims whose voices are marginalized in procedural environments This study seeks to answer how justice is experienced and internalized by these victims within the socio-political and legal dynamics of Indonesia. Employing an interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) methodology, we investigated the lived experiences of twelve Indonesian victims of state-perpetrated human rights violations, all of whom engaged in formal legal proceedings between 2010 and 2022. Data were collected through in-depth, semi-structured interviews and analyzed thematically using NVivo 12 software. Four major themes emerged: judicial silencing, emotional disillusionment, psychological trauma, and narration as resistance. These findings reveal that victims often redefine justice as an internal process of voice reclamation and meaning-making, rather than legal recognition. The study highlights how legal processes, intended to empower, can instead re-inscribe harm, while personal narratives become sites of agency. This research contributes to a more human-centered understanding of justice by revealing how individuals emotionally and existentially navigate the institutional justice process. The findings advocate for empathetic, trauma-informed, and participatory legal reforms rooted in victim experiences.
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Justice systems are often assumed to be neutral and impartial structures for redress, yet victims of human rights violations frequently experience legal processes as disempowering and alienating. In the post-reform Indonesian legal context (1998–2023), research has explored how victims themselves interpret and emotionally navigate biased legal systems. What remains underexamined is the subjective meaning of justice as lived by victims whose voices are marginalized in procedural environments This study seeks to answer how justice is experienced and internalized by these victims within the socio-political and legal dynamics of Indonesia. Employing an interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) methodology, we investigated the lived experiences of twelve Indonesian victims of state-perpetrated human rights violations, all of whom engaged in formal legal proceedings between 2010 and 2022. Data were collected through in-depth, semi-structured interviews and analyzed thematically using NVivo 12 software. Four major themes emerged: judicial silencing, emotional disillusionment, psychological trauma, and narration as resistance. These findings reveal that victims often redefine justice as an internal process of voice reclamation and meaning-making, rather than legal recognition. The study highlights how legal processes, intended to empower, can instead re-inscribe harm, while personal narratives become sites of agency. This research contributes to a more human-centered understanding of justice by revealing how individuals emotionally and existentially navigate the institutional justice process. The findings advocate for empathetic, trauma-informed, and participatory legal reforms rooted in victim experiences.