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New hope to end child marriage after House agrees to raise minimum age
The House of Representatives has finally agreed to increase the minimum marriageable age from women from 16 to 19 before the end of the current term in October.
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The House of Representatives finally agreed to increase the minimum marriageable age of women from 16 to 19 before the end of the current term in October. (Shutterstock/KirylV)
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new hope to curb child marriage in Indonesia is emerging as the House of Representatives has finally agreed to increase the minimum marriageable age of women from 16 to 19. The House agreed to revise Indonesia’s 1974 Marriage Law before the end of its current term in October.
The revision is a follow-up to the Constitutional Court’s ruling last year that the previous minimum age for women to marry was unconstitutional. The court said the difference between the minimum ages for men and women was a form of gender-based discrimination and, thus, violated the 1945 Constitution.
A women’s rights activist, Tunggal Pawestri, lauded the decision, although she added that there is room for improvement.
“Considering the refusal and rejection that we received for so many years, it’s a good start,” she told The Jakarta Post on Monday.
“Ideally [the minimum marriageable age] should be older [than 19], like what the National Population and Family Planning Board [BKKBN] and the Health Ministry proposed, which was 21 years old,” she said.
In 2015, the BKKBN issued a recommendation to increase the minimum marriage age to 21 for women and 25 for men to avoid unprepared marriages that can lead to poverty, as well as to death during childbirth.
Tunggal emphasized that it is paramount for the government to provide comprehensive reproduction health and sexual education to youngsters to bolster the revised law.
