12 - Leaving no girls behind: Inclusive ways to address child marriage in Indonesia

Summary

Indonesia is committed to combating child marriage as part of the country’s multiple international commitments, from the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child we ratified in 1990 to the Sustainable Development Goals we pledged to achieve by 2030. Joko Widodo’s administration has also identified child marriage as one of the challenges it must tackle in the National Medium Term Development Plan 2020–2024. Most recently, in 2022, the president signed a decree to end violence against children that assigns inter-ministerial priority to, among other initiatives, preventing child marriage. Given over 80 million children will benefit from this protection effort, the impact of such policies is potentially significant.

Beyond international and national promises, there seems to be a crossinstitutional consensus that ending child marriage is a worthy cause, as marriages involving an individual or a couple below the age of 18 can cause long-lasting negative consequences on children’s lives, especially girls. In Indonesia, women who marry early are less likely to access health services during pregnancy, and their utilisation of medically assisted birth and antenatal care is limited (BPS 2016; Bruno et al. 2021). Moreover, women in early marriages have weaker decision-making power. They are less likely to have marriage certificates, and their children are less likely to obtain birth certificates (Cameron et al. 2022). In contrast, women who marry after the age of 18 have higher average educational attainment (BPS et al. 2020).

The impact of child marriage is also long term and may be passed on to the next generation. Child marriage poses a risk of poverty to families, which in turn influences girls’ decision to marry before adulthood (SMERU 2013). Among children whose parents were married before age 18, there are higher risks of infant (under 12 months) mortality, stunted growth and being underweight at birth. Children with young mothers have also demonstrated lower cognitive scores (Cameron et al. 2022).

Child marriage has negative consequences for both women and men who marry early. There is a higher chance of divorce in households with underage marriages (Cameron et al. 2022). Additionally, individuals who marry before turning 18 have low participation in the formal labour market and live in households with lower living standards (BPS 2017).

In this chapter, we first discuss the state of child marriage in Indonesia, the progress made through relevant policies, and the challenges to addressing child marriage.