T

hirty-five-year-old Sukaesih’s eyes begin to water when she remembers her experience of being a child bride at the age of 15.

It was poverty that pushed Sukaesih, whose family could only afford to educate her up to fourth-grade level, to marry a man named Rizal to reduce the economic difficulties faced by her father, a pedicab driver with five children to feed.

“But I lived with violence. He repeatedly hit me, cursed me and kicked me out. In the years I lived with him, he never worked, so I needed to work as a laundress to feed my child,” Sukaesih said.

After she divorced Rizal in 2008, Sukaesih married Sisnanto, but a similar thing occurred, which then forced her to work as a migrant in Bahrain. However, when she returned she found that her husband, who she had been financially supporting, had married another woman.

“I hope in future years there is no longer child marriage for our children,” she said, lightly sobbing.

Sukaesih is one among 700 million women in the world who have experienced child marriage, a global phenomenon that remains a serious problem in Indonesia, in which 50,000 girls marry before the age of 15 every year, according to UNICEF data.

One of six Indonesian girls, about 340,000, are married before their 18th birthday every year, the UN body said. The country is 37th on a list of global child-marriage rates, the second-highest in Southeast Asia, behind Cambodia.

On Friday, activists grouped under the Women’s Movement for a Diverse Indonesia (Gerakan Perempuan Mewujudkan Indonesia Beragam) renewed calls for the government to seriously address child marriage, saying it endangered the future of Indonesian women in various ways.

The event was held in commemoration of International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, which falls on Nov. 25.

“Child marriage threatens our 12-year compulsory education program. When children are forced to marry, they lose the chance to complete higher education. It removes their access to decent work and instead feeds into the cycle of poverty,” activist Dwi Ruby Khalifah said.

Domestic abuse is also common when girls marry young, and as many of them lack proper education, they often choose to seek employment as domestic workers or go overseas as migrant workers, Migrant Care legal aid coordinator Musliha Rofik said.

However, since they lack knowledge, their chances of becoming victims of abuse and trafficking are high, she said.

The 1974 Marriage Law sets 16 years as the minimum age at which women can marry, but according to the World Health Organization (WHO), a woman is physically and mentally ready for marriage at 21, for men it is 25.

The number of early marriages in Indonesia experienced a surge in recent years, thanks to intensive campaigning by conservative Muslim groups asking young Muslims to skip dating and get married instead.

Culture and Education Ministry planning and international cooperation bureau head Suharti said that besides the 1974 Marriage Law, the culture of many regions in which a woman’s role is in the household hampered the government’s efforts to reduce early marriage.

“Gender bias, which requires girls to fill their mother’s role [in supporting the family], still hampers them from getting an education, and they end up getting married instead,” she said.