Minister of Education, Culture, Research and Technology Nadiem Makarim has issued Education, Culture, Research and Technology Ministerial Regulation on Sexual Violence on Campus. Acting Director General of Higher Education Nizam on 27 October confirmed this information. The regulation took effect on 3 September 2021 after ratification.

Nadiem instructed higher education institutions to initiate training to strengthen governance to prevent sexual violence by setting up the Task Force for the Prevention and Handling of Sexual Violence. The regulation specified that the task force is a part of the institution that serves as the Centre for the Prevention and Handling of Sexual Violence.

Article 10 of the regulation requires higher education institutions to handle sexual violence through four mechanisms: assistance, protection, imposition of administrative penalty and trauma recovery.

Article 11 explains that assistance mentioned in Article 10 consists of counseling, healthcare, legal assistance, advocacy and/or social and spiritual guidance. Article 12 regulates protection, which includes, but not limited to, guarantee for students to be able to finish their education as well as for education staff to be able to keep on working in the institution.

For administrative penalty, there are three levels of penalty for the perpetrators: light, moderate and severe. If the perpetrators are subjected to light to moderate penalties, they are obliged to be subjected to counseling as well.

Many deemed that the ministerial regulation is more successful in acknowledging the nine forms of sexual violence according the original Anti-Sexual Violence Bill (abbreviated RUU PKS) and even expanded the definition to witnesses of sexual violence who did not do anything or report what they witnessed.

This is indeed a silver lining for the civil society that has been looking forward for more thorough law enforcement on sexual violence, especially after the disheartening changes RUU PKS went through last month. After it was included in the National Legislation Program in 2019, the bill finally resurfaced after major changes made by the lawmakers.

It was renamed from Elimination of Sexual Violence Bill to Sexual Violence Criminal Act Bill. The changes include slashing the nine forms of sexual violence to only five as well as the erasure of protection for the victims. The article about online gender-based violence is also nowhere to be found.