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Uprooting child marriage in Indonesia
The Supreme Court revealed that its religious courts nationwide had granted 64,211 child marriage exemptions in 2020, almost triple the previous year’s log of 23,126 requests.
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A woman holds up a sign against child marriage with the hashtag #ChildNotBride. (The Star/ANN)
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hild marriage in the country is driven by multidimensional factors that often overlap, such as poverty, unintended pregnancy, culture as well as gender stereotyping.
The National Socioeconomic Survey (Susenas) data show that the child marriage rate in rural areas, even in developed rural areas, is two times higher than in urban areas.
According to Meiwita P. Budiharsana from the Biostatistics and Population Department of the Public Health School at the University of Indonesia (UI), the existing laws and regulations concerning child marriage, even the legal age, were still incongruous to each other.
“The government needs to strengthen the law and policies to end child marriage, not just increasing the minimum age. Stringent rules are a must to ensure the law is implemented effectively,” she said.
The amended 1974 Marriage Law, which has been enacted since September 2019, raised the marriageable age to 19 for both sexes from the previous 16 for girls and 19 for boys.
It is one year older than the age definition of a child in the 2002 Law on child protection, however, the legal voting age and driver’s license ownership start at the age of 17.
The 2019 Marriage Law carries no sanctions against child marriage, serving as a loophole for the district courts and religious courts to issue exemptions, with requirements that are relatively easy to obtain.
