Fia Hamid-Walker – Heavy rainfall in Sumatra on 23 November caused landslides and flash floods three days later, with widespread loss of life. Fatalities to date exceed a thousand, and many others have been injured or displaced.
Local leaders and experts have publicly urged the central government to declare a bencana nasional (national disaster) so it can deploy additional resources and enhance search-and-rescue efforts. But while government agencies, including the National Disaster Management Agency (BNPB), have launched large-scale response operations, a recurring public question has arisen: why has the Indonesian government still not officially declared this a national disaster?
What the law says
Indonesia's disaster governance framework is set out in Law No. 24 of 2007 on Disaster Management. Under Article 7, the Law recognises three levels of disaster: district/city, provincial, and national. It is the central government that has the authority to declare a disaster at the national level.
However, the Disaster Management Law and the BNPB policy guidelines do not specify automatic thresholds for classifying a disaster as 'provincial' or 'national'. There are no fixed numbers of deaths, displaced persons, or economic losses that legally require a particular declaration.
The Law simply stipulates that the authority to determine a national disaster status lies with the central government, and is exercised by the President, typically on the advice of the National Disaster Management Agency (BNBP) (Art 7(2)). This makes the designation of a bencana nasional a matter of executive discretion rather than a legal obligation.
Therefore, the confusion over whether the Prabowo Subianto administration should declare the Sumatra floods a national disaster stems not from the absence of law, but from its vagueness.
Brief history of Law No. 242007
Law No. 24 of 2007 on Disaster Management was enacted in response to the significant failures revealed by the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami. Before 2007, Indonesia lacked a comprehensive disaster law.
Back then, disaster response depended on emergency decrees, fragmented sectoral regulations, and weak coordination through the National Coordinating Board for Disaster Management (Bakornas PB), a body with limited authority and control over funding. This system was inadequate even for routine flooding and landslides, and it collapsed entirely during the 2004 tsunami.
At that time, Indonesia was navigating post-Reformasi decentralisation, where regional authority was high but local capacity was uneven. This raised a fundamental question: who governs when local systems fail but sovereignty remains decentralised? Law No. 24 of 2007 was created to address this issue.
It institutionalised disaster governance by establishing the BNPB at the national level and the BPBDs at the provincial and district levels, and by shifting the focus from ad hoc emergency responses to comprehensive disaster management, including prevention, response, and recovery.
Importantly, it avoided rigid legal triggers for declaring a national disaster. Instead, disaster status was left to the executive's discretion, enabling the central government to determine when extraordinary powers should be invoked. This approach reflected deliberate choices: to manage Indonesia's geographic diversity, avoid automatic fiscal obligations, and maintain political control over crisis response.
What does a national disaster declaration mean?
Declaring a national disaster can facilitate enhanced central coordination, increased access to national funds, and the implementation of exceptional administrative measures.
But the government has consistently argued that these tools can be activated without officially declaring a national disaster. Legally, this claim is largely correct, as the law permits substantial central intervention even when the situation is classified only as a regional disaster level.
This is why officials often state that the absence of a national declaration does not imply the state is absent or passive. But law is not only about what is possible. It is also about leadership, accountability and trust.
Does it really matter?
Even if the law permits this discretion, the absence of a declaration remains significant for three reasons.
First, disaster status matters for coordination and leadership. A national disaster declaration sends a clear signal about who is in charge and how responsibilities are distributed between different levels of government. It reduces uncertainty among local governments, civil society organisations, and international partners.
Second, it matters for accountability. Because the Disaster Management Law provides no binding criteria for declaring a national disaster, the public has little insight into how decisions are made. Without clear explanations, it becomes difficult to distinguish between assessments based on capacity and decisions influenced by political or budgetary considerations.
Third, disaster declarations carry symbolic weight. Calling a catastrophic event a national disaster is a public acknowledgment that the harm exceeds local boundaries and demands collective national responsibility. For affected communities, this recognition matters. It affirms that their suffering is not merely a regional problem to be managed quietly, but a national concern.
The central government may be responding locally, but a response alone does not replace explanation.
Against this backdrop, a formal declaration of a national disaster would not only expand legal capacity but also constitute an act of constitutional leadership by clarifying authority, consolidating coordination, and signalling that the scale of harm has exceeded the limits of regional governance.
The pitfalls of disaster politics
I do not suggest that every major disaster must be declared a national disaster. The Disaster Management Law was deliberately designed to give the government room to manoeuvre.
In practice, declaring a national disaster is more than an administrative formality. It is a political move because it reshapes relationships between Jakarta and the regions.
In a decentralised system, a national declaration can be seen as an assertion that local capacity has been surpassed, so the national government must take control. This can enhance coordination but also alters public expectations: when the president declares something 'national', he or she becomes the primary focus of both credit and blame.
The label also has fiscal and institutional implications. A national declaration is generally regarded as a gateway to the significant mobilisation of national resources and the adoption of exceptional measures, even though many tools can be legally activated without it. The government therefore faces a strategic choice: declare and accept increased scrutiny and responsibility, or refrain from declaration and risk perceptions of minimisation or lack of transparency.
Another political implication of declaring a national disaster is that it can intensify international attention and trigger offers of assistance, especially from foreign governments, international organisations, and foreign NGOs. Indonesia's disaster-response legal framework permits international actors to participate, but only through a state-coordinated, permissioned architecture (rather than open access), with BNPB playing a central gatekeeping role.
In this setting, a national declaration can be perceived as raising the stakes for heightened expectations of transparency, increasing requests for foreign presence (personnel, logistics, equipment), and generating sensitivity about sovereignty, security, and national control. These concerns have surfaced in past disaster responses in which Indonesia limited, or tightly managed, foreign humanitarian access.
Disaster status also influences the public narrative. Calling a catastrophe 'national' indicates that the harm is not merely a local problem but a major crisis that requires unity and sustained attention. Not naming and declaring may be legally justified, but it may also be politically risky when affected communities and local leaders openly seek recognition and support.
A question of transparency, not accusation
Flexibility can be valuable in a country as large and diverse as Indonesia. But flexibility without transparency creates its own risks.
When disaster status is discretionary, and criteria are not publicly articulated, decisions can appear opaque, even when they are lawful. At a minimum, the public deserves clarity about the factors that are considered when a decision is made about whether a disaster is national or not. Why is national status deemed unnecessary? What benchmarks are being used to assess whether regional capacity has been exceeded?
These are reasonable questions in a democratic system, particularly when lives, livelihoods, and long-term recovery are at stake. How Indonesia explains those choices matters as much as the choices themselves.