Last month a highly controversial marriage between a 15 year-old boy and 14-year-old girl in South Sulawesi spurred the Indonesian government to start taking stern measures to finally put an end to child marriage, but the practice continues unabated for now, with another equally controversial underage wedding taking place in the same province.
On Saturday, a 14-year-old boy, identified by his initials ST, tied the knot with a 16-year-old girl, identified as RS, who is also his cousin. Amid media and public scrutiny over the underage marriage, the young couple from Maros regency was revealed to have received the full blessing of their families, particularly ST’s sick mother.
“These two are cousins. Their mothers are siblings. I wed them because ST’s mother is sick and nobody is caring for her. That’s why ST is being married to his own cousin so his mother can be cared for by his cousin,” said ST’s father, DB, as quoted by Detik yesterday.
DB added that ST is the youngest of five children and that his siblings have already moved out of their home. Furthermore, ST, who lives with his parents in South Kalimantan, didn’t even meet RS until their wedding that weekend.
“Two people have proposed [to RS] before, but we turned them down because she was still too little. This time, she was proposed to by her own cousin, we accepted so that she can help care for her sick aunt,” said RS’ father, AM, as quoted by Detik.
Unlike the recent marriage between a 15 and 14-year-old in the province which was legally recognized because of a religious court order, ST and RS’ marriage was not reported to have been similarly legally sanctioned.
The current legal age of marriage in Indonesia is 19 years old for men and 16 years old for women. However, the country’s 1974 Law on Marriage also includes a major loophole to this requirement which allows marriages to still be considered legal if they are done “in accordance” with religious belief, known as nikah siri. As such, underage marriages that have been sanctified by religious courts or officials must still be officially recognized by the government — if not, many are satisfied with merely fulfilling religious or traditional requirements for marriage.
President Joko Widodo has agreed to sign a Perppu (Government Regulation in Lieu of Law) soon, which will likely raise the legal age of marriage to 20 years old for women, although the regulation still remains under discussion. The Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI), the nation’s highest clerical authority, objected to the potential Perppu on religious grounds.
In April of last year, Indonesian female Muslim clerics issued an unprecedented fatwa (edict) declaring child marriage to be harmful as it is a large contributor to Indonesia’s high maternal mortality rate. Furthermore, they cited studies that many Indonesian child brides could not continue their studies once wed and half their marriages ended in divorce in addition to child marriage increasing the risks of exploitation, sexual violence, and domestic abuse.
Even so, stories about children (some as young as 14) getting married continued to take place and go viral on social media since then. Women’s Empowerment and Child Protection Deputy Minister Lenny Rosalin said that child marriage in Indonesia is at “emergency levels” as, based on UNICEF data, Indonesia ranks seventh in the world and the second highest in Southeast Asia in terms of the overall percentage of marriages in which at least one of the spouses is under 18 years old. According to government census data, 17% of all Indonesian girls married in 2016 were under 18.
