Indonesia raises minimum age for brides in push to end child marriage

Indonesia has raised the legal age that women can marry in the country by three years, in a bid to curb child exploitation.

All factions of the country’s parliament backed a revision to its laws to set the age to 19.

Previously the legal age for marriage was at 16 for women and 19 for men.

Despite the legal threshold, younger girls have been allowed to marry - with no minimum age enforced - if their parents request it.

Indonesia is among the 10 countries in the world with the highest number of child brides, according to campaign group Girls Not Brides.

One in four girls in Indonesia is married before they turn 18, a 2016 report by Indonesia’s Statistics Agency and UNICEF found.

“The society still encourages girls to get married in their teenage years, otherwise they will be considered spinsters,” said Masruchah of the National Commission on Violence Against Women.

Masruchah, who uses one name, said the commission would have preferred 21 as the minimum age for marriage for men and women.

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The activist argued that this is when both genders can be deemed sufficiently mature in terms of reproduction and economic stability.

Indonesia’s Constitutional Court ruled in December that it was discriminatory to have a lower marriage age for women than for men.

Child marriage has been blamed for causing maternal and infant deaths in the country, as well as encouraging child labour, Women’s Empowerment and Child Protection Minister Yohana Yembise said in a statement.

“Finally, after 45 years (of the existing marriage law). This is a present for Indonesian children,” she said.

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