Jakarta – The marriage age should be increased to 21 for girls and to 25 for boys to curb Indonesia's population growth, a representative of the National Population and Family Planning Agency (BKKBN) said on Monday.
"If the marriage age is raised the birth rate will automatically decrease," said Masri Muadz, the agency's director of youth and protection of reproductive rights.
The 1974 Marriage Law stipulates that women must be at least 16 and men at 19 to marry but allows younger people to marry if their parents request permission from the Religious Court.
Underage marriage have increased in certain regions over the last several years, according to reports.
Early marriage dispensations requests at the Bantul regency Religious Court increased to 82 in 2009 from 70 in 2008, according to Kompas. Gresik regency, East Java recorded a 58 percent increase in dispensation requests between 2007 and 2008.
International organization Save the Children reported a 500 percent increase in requests lodged with the religious court in Malang, East Java, in 2008.
This trend will lead to more births and more health problems for women, Masri said. "The reproductive systems of women under 20 years of age are not fully developed and the risk of giving birth is bigger," Masri said.
Young couples are rarely adequately prepared and lack the education or steady income needed to support a marriage, he added.
Masri said the recommended increase in the minimum marriage age would give couples a longer period to prepare and to mature.
Concern over the minimum marriage age was also shared by Maria Ulfah Anshor, the chairwoman of the women's wing of Nahdlatul Ulama, Imdonesia's largest Muslim organization.
"The law states that girls are eligible to marry when they are 16," she said. "Girls of this age have not matured yet, even though physically they look ready. We also need to consider whether their reproductive organs have developed enough," she added.
Maria said that underage marriage was an issue still debated by Muslims. "At an earlier NU congress, a discussion led to a decision that people under 18 should not be allowed," she said. "Grass roots clerics cite the example that the Prophet married a 9-year-old girl," she added.
Some underage marriage supporters at NU's national congress in Makassar in March said that an arranged marriage between two children is permissible, but must not be consummated until the husband and wife are "strong enough to have sexual intercourse." The supporters did not elaborate further.
Underage marriage also violates children's rights, says an activist. "It violates a children's rights because of the different minimum marriage ages for girls and boys," said Setiawan Cahyo Nugroho, a representative of Save the Children.
Marriage is an indicator of maturity in Indonesia, and a 13-year-old who marries is considered an adult and no longer has rights as a child, he added.
Early marriage will lead young people to drop out of school, he said. "I have never heard of a child who marries and then continues to study," he said.
The BKKBN hopes to cap Indonesia's population at 234.1 million in 2010, however the Central Statistics Agency's near-complete census says the country's population may top 236 million people, as previously reported.
The agency has raised concerns about Indonesia's fertility rate at 2.6 children per woman. It did not meet a goal to reduce the rate to 2.2 in 2007. Indonesia's population growth rate was 1.097 percent in 2010, which is below the 2009 global rate of 1.133 percent, according to the CIA World Factbook. (map)