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fter heated debate, the first National Adolescent Summit in Yogyakarta has concluded with a declaration containing 28 recommendations including a call for wider access to reproductive health information and services including access to contraception for married and unmarried adolescents.

“All adolescent girls are at risk of unwanted pregnancy. However, due to moral and cultural reasons, they cannot access contraception and reproductive health services,” said Petra from GenRe (The Planned Generation) Yogyakarta during the event, which ended over the weekend.

Syofara Mukti Wijayanto, a member of the Youth Forum of Indonesian Planned Parenthood (PKBI) Yogyakarta, however, insisted that premarital sex was against Indonesian culture and religious norms.

“We cannot turn a blind eye while there are more and more adolescents getting sexually active but have no knowledge and information about reproductive health services,” Wijayanto said.

The National Summit, which was co-organized by the National Population and Family Planning Board (BKKBN) and Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs, and supported by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) and Rutgers Indonesia, among other parties, aimed to involve young people in the formulation of programs and policies regarding their wellbeing.

Melinda Gates, cofounder of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, also attended the event, which was participated in by 80 adolescent activists from 25 provinces.

Data from the Long-Medium Term National Development (RPJM) survey reveals that the nation’s adolescents are increasingly permissive of sexual behavior.

In 2015, around 5 percent of unmarried Indonesian adolescents had previously had sexual intercourse and the figure has continued to rise.

The median age at which people first had sex was 20.2 years in 2015. In the same year, approximately 2.4 percent of adolescents aged 10-19 years old were married.

Intervention programs are implemented by various stakeholders, including government, NGOs and adolescent network organizations.

However, the coverage is still mainly focused on major cities and selected provinces only.

Ambar Rahayu, the deputy director for family welfare and empowerment at the BKKBN, said the government could not provide contraception to unmarried couples, saying that it would violate the 2009 Population and Family Development Law.

“The law only allows married couples to access contraception,” Rahayu stressed.

UNICEF Indonesia deputy representative Lauren Rumble said nearly 1,000 girls got married every day in Indonesia.

“Indonesia’s numbers of early marriage are not commensurate with the country’s middle-income status and pace of economic development,” she said. “We estimate that 1.6 percent of GDP [gross domestic product] is lost every year to the burden of child marriage.”

Meanwhile, Annette Sachs Robertson, UNFPA’s Indonesia representative, said that, in order to attain reproductive health and rights, adolescents should have the information and services, including contraceptives and condoms, that will protect them from unplanned pregnancies, sexually transmitted infections and HIV.

Other recommendations to emerge from the event include calls for the government to create regulations to support efforts to curb the number of unwanted teenage pregnancies and make policies to ensure that pregnant children and teenagers have access to services that prevent them from suffering negative stigma and discrimination.

The youth participants also asked the government and other relevant organizations to create a standardized reproductive health module to be included in the national curriculum, both formal and non-formal, for teenagers aged 10 to 19 years old.