By: Bambang Sabekti
Having watched shipping traffic move through the Strait of Malacca for more than three decades, I have learned one thing: a strategic waterway is never safe simply because of where it sits on a map. It is safe because the states around it consistently uphold the rules, and because that credibility is built over years, not claimed overnight. That is why the resolution adopted by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) in the second week of July 2026 deserves closer attention from Indonesia, rather than being read as just another piece of diplomatic news out of London.
The resolution was led by Singapore and co-sponsored by 30 member states, including Indonesia and Malaysia, and was adopted during the IMO Council’s 137th session. It reaffirms the rights and freedoms of merchant vessels transiting international shipping lanes — including straits used for international navigation — in line with international law as reflected in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), 1982. UNCLOS remains the world’s principal framework governing maritime boundaries, rights of passage, and the use of marine resources, and has been ratified by more than 160 states, including Indonesia.
What is particularly notable, and often overlooked in the coverage, is why Singapore was chosen to lead this resolution. It was not simply diplomatic circumstance. The resolution explicitly references the Cooperative Mechanism on Safety of Navigation and Environmental Protection in the Straits of Malacca and Singapore, a framework operating under IMO auspices since 2007 that brings together Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore as littoral states alongside user states and industry stakeholders. The Council specifically noted the three countries’ experience in jointly managing the Straits of Malacca and Singapore, describing it as a successful model of regional cooperation, and encouraged wider contributions to the two funds that sustain the mechanism.
In other words, Singapore was entrusted with leading this effort not merely because of its diplomatic visibility, but because it holds a genuine track record of cooperatively managing a strategic chokepoint — and that track record was never built alone. Indonesia has been part of that credibility for nearly two decades. This is a point rarely acknowledged publicly: Indonesia already holds a measure of trust within the international maritime community, earned through consistent participation in that cooperative framework. The real question is whether that trust is being protected, or gradually eroded by inconsistent policy.
The trigger for the resolution is clear enough: escalation in the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s busiest energy corridors, following a series of attacks on merchant vessels and Iran’s attempt to assert unilateral control over the strait. A temporary truce signed on 17 June reopened the waterway, though the situation remains closely watched by the international shipping community. Before the conflict erupted earlier this year, Hormuz carried roughly a fifth of the world’s oil supply. IMO itself has acknowledged that the resolution does not directly change the security situation on the ground — it is a political signal rather than a military solution: a joint declaration that international shipping must remain subject to agreed global rules, not the unilateral claims of a single state.
This is where Indonesia’s public perception tends to fall short. Hormuz feels distant, yet the underlying logic is not distant at all from our own front yard. Indonesia is one of four states bordering the Strait of Malacca, alongside Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand. According to the US Energy Information Administration, Malacca is the world’s largest oil chokepoint by transit volume: more than 23 million barrels of oil, roughly 29 percent of total global maritime oil flows, passed through the strait in the first half of last year alone. In terms of vessel traffic, around 200 ships transit Malacca daily — twice the daily volume Hormuz carried before its crisis. President Prabowo Subianto himself has noted that roughly 70 percent of Asia’s trade passes through Indonesian waterways: the Lombok, Sunda, and Malacca straits.
That consistency was tested from within Indonesia itself. Earlier this year, Finance Minister Purbaya Yudhi Sadewa floated the idea of imposing a levy on vessels transiting the Strait of Malacca, directly inspired by Iran’s plan to charge transit fees in Hormuz. The idea was withdrawn after Indonesia and Singapore reaffirmed their commitment to freedom of navigation, a position President Prabowo reiterated together with Singapore’s Prime Minister Lawrence Wong in early July. This brief episode is perhaps the most instructive to read alongside the new IMO resolution: the resolution essentially rejects the notion that a single coastal state has the right to impose unilateral charges on an international strait — a notion that had briefly surfaced in Indonesia’s own policy discourse before being shelved. The precedent risk, in other words, is not confined to the Middle East. Ironically, Indonesia is now among the co-sponsors of a resolution rejecting the very logic it had briefly considered at home.
In an increasingly uncertain geopolitical era, the advantage of an international strait is no longer determined solely by geography, but by the credibility of its coastal states in upholding legal certainty, navigational safety, and policy consistency. Geography gives Indonesia a privileged position along global trade routes, but that position only holds value as long as the surrounding states are trusted to keep the waterway open, consistently. Once that credibility cracks — however slightly — cargo and vessel traffic will begin seeking alternatives, however strategic a strait may be on paper. Thailand, for instance, is accelerating a land bridge project connecting the Strait of Malacca with the Gulf of Thailand, a clear illustration that any gap in regulatory or security certainty in Malacca can be exploited by alternative corridors seeking to capture transhipment cargo that currently passes through Indonesian and Singaporean waters.
Yet there is also an opportunity here, not merely a threat. The Hormuz crisis has forced many global carriers to reroute cargo around the Cape of Good Hope at significant added cost per container. Amid that disruption, Indonesia and Singapore’s consistency in keeping Malacca open becomes a genuine competitive asset — a stable, predictable route carries real premium value for carriers and cargo owners seeking certainty, especially in a world witnessing more frequent disruptions at other strategic chokepoints. Ports along Sumatra’s eastern coast, such as Belawan and Dumai, have an opportunity to position themselves as structurally stable logistics nodes — not by geographic accident, but through consistent government policy, and through the credibility already built via the cooperative mechanism with Singapore and Malaysia since 2007.
For Indonesia, safeguarding the Strait of Malacca is not simply about fulfilling its obligations as a coastal state under UNCLOS. More than that, preserving openness, legal certainty, and freedom of navigation represents a long-term investment in the competitiveness of national logistics, ports, and trade. This IMO resolution, though born of a crisis in a distant region, is in fact posing a much closer question: is Indonesia prepared to protect the credibility capital it already holds in the Strait of Malacca — or will it leave geography to work alone, until one day that proves not to be enough.
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Bambang Sabekti is Director of PT Bintang Laut Platinum, a multimodal transport company serving export and import cargo. Bambang is a logistics, supply chain, and international trade practitioner who writes actively on economic competitiveness, trade governance, and national logistics policy. His writing has been published in RMOL, Katadata, Kompas.com, and Inilah.com.
Previously, Bambang served as Indonesia Director for American President Lines (APL) and APL Logistics, and as Senior Advisor to the Board of Directors of New Priok Container Terminal One (NPCT1). He was also a candidate for Director General of Sea Transportation in an open selection process held by the Ministry of Transportation. Bambang has served as a member of the jury for the Indonesian Journalists’ Writing Competition held in conjunction with the anniversary of PT Pelabuhan Indonesia (Persero), and was again appointed to the jury of the Pelabuhan Indonesia Award 2023.