FH UGM's Department of International Law held a guest lecture on Thursday, September 22. Attended by 203 undergraduate and postgraduate students, the session took place in the Auditorium of Building B at the Faculty of Law.
The lecture's theme was "International Law in Theory and Practice," featuring L. Amrih Jinangkung, S.H., LL.M. as speaker. Jinangkung is an FH UGM alumnus who went on to study at Cornell Law School in the United States. He began his career at Indonesia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1993, eventually being appointed Director General of Legal Affairs and International Treaties at the Ministry in April 2022.
Jinangkung opened the session by posing a provocative question about whether international law truly qualifies as "law," and if so, whether it's genuinely "international" in character. This sparked disagreement among students — some argued international law couldn't properly be categorized as law at all, while others maintained it remained a genuine form of law.
He then continued the lecture by presenting several case studies involving global events that violated international law. One example concerned a past instance where Indonesia itself ran up against international law regarding territorial waters — under the applicable international law at the time, a state's territorial boundary extended only 3 miles from the coastline. However, Indonesian legal experts, after independence, successfully fought for the nation's sovereignty through the Djuanda Declaration, in which Indonesia asserted sovereignty over the seas within its archipelago and set its territorial sea boundary at 12 miles from the outermost points of its islands.
Through these case studies, Jinangkung encouraged students to critically examine the nature of international law. By the end of the lecture, students remained divided on whether international law qualifies as "law" in the traditional sense. Jinangkung expressed hope that students would come away with a deeper understanding of what international law truly is, and closed the session with an open discussion.
