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House to increase minimum marriage age for women

The revision will be limited to Article 7 of the law, which also includes a point concerning dispensation for teenagers seeking a marriage permit

Nurul Fitri Ramadhani (The Jakarta Post)
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Jakarta
Wed, June 26, 2019

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House to increase minimum marriage age for women The 1974 Marriage Law sets the marriageable age for women at 16 and for men at 19, even though the 2002 Child Protection Law defines children as anyone “under the age of 18”. (Shutterstock/File)

T

he House of Representatives has announced it would revise Indonesia’s 1974 Marriage Law and increase the minimum marriageable age for women from 16 to 19 before the end of the current term in October.

According to the House’s Legislation Body (Baleg), the revision will be limited to Article 7 of the law, which also includes a point concerning dispensation for teenagers seeking a marriage permit. The House aims to make it more difficult for them to be granted an exemption.

“It’s a good time for Baleg to carry out this limited revision in the next three months before the end of its term. There will be no technical hurdles because we’ll only revise one article,” Baleg member Eva Kusuma Sundari of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) said in Jakarta on Tuesday.

The revision is a follow-up to the Constitutional Court’s (MK) decision last year to deem the current minimum marriage age for women unconstitutional. The minimum age to marry for men is 19.

The court further argued that the difference in the minimum age for men and women was a form of gender-based discrimination and, therefore, contradicted the 1945 Constitution.

However, it refused to grant the plaintiffs' demand to raise the minimum age for women to marry, arguing that it was the job of lawmakers to do so.

Golkar lawmaker Hetifah Sjaifudian, who is also a member of the Indonesian Women’s Parliamentary Caucus (KPPI), said the same marriageable age minimum for men and women would reduce child marriage and eradicate legal discrimination against women. 

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