Individual legal responsibility for unlawful orders within police institutions in Indonesia and its relevance to international human rights norms*

Police institutions depend on hierarchical command to maintain operational discipline, yet formally valid orders may still be unlawful or incompatible with international human rights standards, placing officers between structural obedience and personal legal responsibility. This article examines whether Indonesia’s existing legal framework provides a sufficiently clear and legally secure basis for refusing unlawful orders within hierarchical police institutions. Using a normative–comparative approach, the article analyses Indonesian statutory law, police ethics regulations, and relevant international human rights norms, and compares them with selected regulatory approaches drawn from Continental European, Nordic, German, and Anglo-Saxon models. The study finds that Indonesia suffers from an asymmetric legal design: the law affirms command authority more clearly than it regulates objection, legality review, protection against retaliation, and the allocation of individual responsibility when unlawful orders are issued. Although Police Regulation No. 7 of 2022 recognises refusal and protection at the ethical level, it does not yet provide the statutory certainty, review architecture, and enforceable safeguards required for a coercive state institution operating under international human rights standards. This article argues that Indonesia should adopt a hybrid legality–compliance model in which refusal of unlawful orders is treated not as a disciplinary anomaly, but as an institutional safeguard. Such a model requires four cumulative guarantees: clear objection procedures, legality-review mechanisms not wholly controlled by the immediate chain of command, credible anti-retaliation protection, and a precise allocation of responsibility between the issuer and the subordinate. In this way, the article contributes a normative framework for reconciling command discipline with legality, accountability, and human rights protection in Indonesian policing.