The country reported 9,629 COVID-19 cases on Monday – the first time in 10 weeks the daily caseload was below the 10,000 mark.

Indonesia should come up with better plastic waste management policies as countries recently endorsed a United Nations resolution to end plastic pollution and forge an international legally binding agreement by 2024, activists say.

Yaqut’s progressive policies have been met with various pushbacks from different groups, not least because of his choice of words.

Teachers’ associations say the government should focus on addressing the more urgent problem of learning loss instead.

COVID-19 deaths continue to rise in Indonesia even though the third wave of coronavirus infections — fueled by the highly contagious Omicron variant — has been showing signs of easing these past weeks.

The uptick in cases, which skyrocketed above pre-pandemic levels, indicates growing public awareness of reporting violence against women amid the ongoing pandemic; however, the figure only represents the tip of the iceberg, Komnas Perempuan commissioners said.

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.

Statistics Indonesia’s National Socioeconomic Survey (Susenas) from 2018 to 2020 reported an underage marriage prevalence of 15 percent among girls between the ages of 10 and 16 years.

The Manpower Ministry is preparing a decree aimed at preventing and handling cases of sexual violence in workplaces, in a move to provide stronger legal protections for workers amid an increase in reported complaints of such cases in the country.

The government waived the mandatory quarantine for fully vaccinated international visitors to popular tourist destination Bali on Monday, as it seeks to loosen requirements in other parts of the country by April 1.

The government will relax restrictions in the metropolitan agglomeration areas of Jakarta and Surabaya and a number of regencies and cities across the archipelago starting on Tuesday, saying epidemiological indicators have improved following the third COVID-19 peak.

Authorities have moved to ramp up the national vaccination drive and extend the shelf life of some COVID-19 vaccine brands in a bid to prevent millions of near-expiry vaccines from being unusable.

The newly inaugurated university was scheduled to run in-person classes for the first semester in September last year, but the move was canceled following a COVID-19 surge. The offline classes for the second semester will start on March 7.

Studies find that some children still reel from persistent fatigue and other prolonged COVID-19 symptoms, months after they first tested positive.

Cyberattacks in Indonesia were on the rise last year and increasingly targeted select groups such as activists, students, journalists and individuals, indicating alarming efforts to weaken civil society and curb critical opinions, a Southeast Asia Freedom of Expression Network (SAFEnet) report revealed.

Even as life started to return to some semblance of normalcy in recent months – partly due to the availability of vaccines, the pandemic has drastically transforming how people work and learn as they adapt to world changed by the coronavirus.

Authorities have revealed that a recent surge of COVID-19 infections tied to the highly contagious Omicron variant had an especially devastating impact on millions of Indonesians with diabetes, with the chronic illness being the most common comorbidity associated with coronavirus deaths in the past two months.

The decision underscores challenges many developing countries face in their slow inoculation campaigns, as vaccines donated by wealthy countries arrive with a relatively short shelf life of just a few months or even weeks.

Comprehensive sex education in school was at the forefront of the organization’s five-year programs, all designed to help create a healthy society free from sexual and gender-based violence.

Throughout 2021, police reports were filed on alleged sexual violence committed by religious boarding school teachers, an elementary school teacher, a mosque caretaker and Quran reading tutors in different cities.

Now, she faces an even bigger threat: the relocation of Indonesia's capital from Jakarta to a site in East Kalimantan, which would devastate small businesses like Maesaroh's that depend on government offices and other firms in Jakarta.

The government plans to trial a quarantine-free international entry policy in Bali starting on March 14, citing the improving COVID-19 situation.

Indonesia has evacuated 31 citizens residing in Ukraine into neighboring Romania and Poland as Russian forces begin to seize the country's airports.

Indonesia is preparing the evacuation of its citizens from Ukraine overland through Poland and Romania, Foreign Ministry officials have said, as Russia’s attacks on the Eastern European state intensify.

The government has said that it is mulling whether to implement a plastic credit scheme in a move to address mounting concerns about plastic waste in the country, although an expert has expressed concerns that such a scheme could allow producers to shift their responsibilities to others.

Education, Culture, Research and Technology Minister Nadiem Makarim’s push to introduce a new curriculum, dubbed the Merdeka (Freedom) curriculum, has been met with skepticism from teachers, who are not convinced that it is compatible with schools nationwide, although the implementation remains optional.

University of Indonesia (UI) historian Bondan Kanumuyoso said in a webinar on Tuesday that Dutch actions during the war of independence were legally war crimes, while questioning the reluctance of the researchers to use the term.

The government is now requiring applicants to have active policies in the supposedly universal health insurance scheme in order to access a range of public services, from legally selling and buying land to applying for a driving license, in its bid to sign up as many new policyholders as possible.

Researchers recently began phase one clinical trials of a domestically produced COVID-19 candidate vaccine, a development that may bring the country closer to producing its first homegrown coronavirus jab.

While recent epidemiological data suggest that COVID-19 transmission has begun to slow down in some areas of the country, the government has decided to maintain stringent curbs, as experts contend that the jury is still out on whether or not the Omicron-fueled third wave of infections has passed its peak.