Reh Atemalem Susanti, Jakarta – The secretary-general of National Commission for the Protection of Children, Arist Merdeka Sirait, said marriages between underage children and adults or among underage children is a humanitarian crime.

"There are no positive aspects about this," he said, following a discussion on "Child Fulfillment and Protection Program and Underage Marriages from the Perspective of Child Protection" yesterday in Jakarta.

The Commission for the Protection of Children, he said, will meet with religious leaders to discuss ways to publicize this issue to people in rural areas, especially in the wake of the Indonesian Council of Ulemas (MUI) which declared early-age marriages to be a sin, during their convention at Padang Panjang last week.

Obstetrician and gynecologist Rudy Irwin said that women who married before they were 20 years old are medically prone to cervical cancer. Moreover, cancer of the cervix can happen to women who give birth before the age of 20 or often change sex partners. "Women who get married before the age of 20 are 58.5 percent more prone to getting cervical cancer," he said.

Each year, around 500,000 women are diagnosed with cervical cancer and more than 250,000 of them die. "There are 2.2 million women at present who have cervical cancer," Rudy said.

The secretary-general of the Indonesian Conference on Religion and Peace, Siti Musdah Mulia, said early marriages happen because of a number of factors, like poverty and the desire to improve their economic status. "The most obvious one is the cultural factor," she said.

Siti explained that many parents are unclear over the concept of a having children. They often consider children as investment, thinking their existence should be beneficial for the family. "The myth is that marrying children can make men more powerful and younger," she said. "This culture must be changed. This is where the role of religious leaders and public figures become important."