JAKARTA - Cases of child marriage in Indonesia are very worrying. Based on data from the religious court regarding applications for child marriage dispensation, in 2021 there were 65 thousand cases recorded and in 2022 there were 55 thousand submissions.
The submission of applications for marriage at a young age is mostly due to the factor that the female applicant is already pregnant and the encouragement factor from parents who want their child to marry soon because they already have close friends/dating.
“The high number of child marriages is a threat to the fulfillment of children's basic rights. Not only does it have a physical and psychological impact on children, marriage at a young age can also exacerbate poverty, stunting, school dropouts, and the threat of cervical cancer/uterine cancer in children," said Expert Staff to the Minister for Poverty Reduction of the Ministry of PPPA, Titi Eko Rahayu, quoted from the statement of the Ministry of PPPA, Monday, January 30.
The amendment to the Marriage Law where the minimum age for marriage for women and men is 19 years is the government's effort to prevent children from marrying too soon. However, in the field, requests for marriage proposals are still ongoing.
“This is already very worrying. These children are the hope for the future to build Indonesia and cases of child marriage are a big obstacle. This is a shared responsibility because the issue of child marriage is complex and multi-sectoral," continued Titi Eko Rahayu.
Meanwhile, the Director General of the Religious Courts Administration Development Directorate General of the Supreme Court, Nur Djannah Syaf, emphasized that the issue of child marriage is very urgent. The factor of love and the insistence of parents to get married is one of the main reasons for complaints about marriage.
"In 2022 nationally, there are around 52 thousand marriage dispensation cases that will go to the religious courts and of these, around 34 thousand of them are driven by the factor of love so that parents ask the courts so that their children are married off immediately. Then around 13,547 applicants applied for marriage because they were pregnant beforehand and 1,132 applicants admitted that they had had intercourse. Another factor is due to economic reasons and reasons for arranged marriages considering that their child has reached puberty, has menstruated and grows pubic hair in boys," said Nur Djannah.
Data for 2022, the largest number of marriage dispensations are in the East Java religious high court (PTA) in Surabaya, with the highest area being in Malang due to the dropout factor. Furthermore, many submissions also occurred in PTA Semarang, PTA Bandung and PTA Makasar.
Law Number 16 of 2019 concerning Amendments to Law (UU) Number 1 of 1974 concerning Marriage. This law is the hope regarding various efforts to prevent or eliminate child marriage in Indonesia.
The fundamental change in this regulation is that there is a change in the minimum age of marriage to 19 years for the bride and groom. Before this law was revised, the minimum age for brides was 16 years and for grooms 19 years.
Besides being discriminatory, old laws have placed girls as the main victims of child marriage practices. At present Forced Child Marriage is a form of sexual violence as stated in Law 12 of 2022 concerning Crimes of Sexual Violence.
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