State Responsibility for Gross Human Rights Violations in Human Trafficking Syndicates based on The Principle of Dignified Justice

Abstract

The crime of trafficking in persons (TIP), controlled by transnational syndicates, is no longer merely an ordinary cross-border crime but has evolved into a crime against humanity that fulfills the elements of gross human rights violations. This abstract highlights the state's failure to provide both preventive and repressive protection for victims, which is often characterized by omission or even the involvement of rogue state officials. This condition demonstrates that the existing positive legal framework is inadequate to hold the state substantively accountable, leaving victims trapped in a cycle of exploitation that degrades human dignity. The research method employed in this article is a normative juridical approach supported by socio-legal analysis. This study examines primary legal materials in the form of national legislation, including the 1945 Constitution of the Republic of Indonesia, Law No. 39 of 1999 concerning Human Rights, and Law No. 21 of 2007 concerning the Eradication of the Crime of Trafficking in Persons, as well as international legal instruments. This approach is used to analyze legal gaps in the state responsibility system and confront them with the reality of victims' suffering in the field, which has failed to be remedied by overly bureaucratic and positivistic legal procedures. The findings of this study affirm the need to reconstruct the paradigm of state responsibility based on the principle of "Dignified Justice." Justice must not merely be understood as the imposition of criminal sanctions on direct perpetrators but must also encompass the state's absolute obligation to restore victims. The state must bear responsibility for restitution if the syndicate fails to pay, eradicate the structural involvement of state officials, and transform the legal approach from one centered on the certainty of statutory texts toward a human-centered legal system that restores the dignity and worth of victims in their entirety.