Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Judgments and Arbitral Awards in Indonesia: Lessons from Singapore and Malaysia

Indonesia acceded to the 1958 New York Convention more than four decades ago, yet enforcing a foreign arbitral award there remains markedly less predictable than in its closest regional peers. This article argues that two linked features of the domestic regime explain most of that gap: a court-centric exequatur process that routes every foreign award through the Central Jakarta District Court, and an undefined “public policy” exception that lets courts reopen the merits of disputes that arbitration was meant to settle. Using a normative-juridical method and a structured comparison with Singapore and Malaysia along four fixed indicators, the study reads the 1999 Arbitration Law, Supreme Court Regulations No. 1 of 1990 and No. 3 of 2023, the BANI Rules, and recent Central Jakarta District Court decisions against the standard set by the Model Law. It finds that the 2023 reform, though it digitizes the procedure, cannot reach these substantive defects, which sit in primary legislation. Singapore’s narrow public-policy reading and Malaysia’s Model Law-based, pro-enforcement framework, including its workable treatment of Islamic-finance awards, show what closing the gap would require. The article concludes that Indonesia should define the public-policy exception restrictively, clarify the hierarchy of its arbitration norms, and confine judicial review at the exequatur stage.