Bambang Muryanto, Yogyakarta – As many as 1.7 million local girls and women under the age of 24 give birth annually, with nearly a half a million of them being teenagers, a representative of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in Indonesia has said.
"Young people account for 37 percent of all births annually in Indonesia," UNFPA Indonesia chief representative Jose Ferraris said during the launch of the 2013 World Population Situation Report.
Citing research by Iwu Utomo of the Australian National University, Ferraris said Indonesian teenagers who fell pregnant mostly lived in rural areas, had a low level of education and came from low-income families.
He said that UNFPA's approach to addressing adolescent pregnancy focused more on upholding the rights of every girl and empowering her to exercise her rights.
"We also seek to eliminate conditions that contribute to adolescent pregnancy, such as societal and community conditions, norms, values and structural forces that result in gender inequality, poverty, child marriage and negative attitudes towards sexual and reproductive health and rights," he said.
Of all the measures, according to Ferraris, education was the most effective in helping to prevent pregnancy among teenagers.
He also expressed concern about the Marriage Law, which allows 16-year-old females and 19-year-old males to marry.
"This is at odds with the development agenda of ICPD and MDGs and Indonesia's commitment to the human rights framework of CEDAW [Convention to Eliminate All Forms of Discrimination Against Women] and the Convention of the Rights of the Child," he said.
Separately, National Population and Family Planning Board (BKKBN) head of population control Wendy Hartanto acknowledged that the government had been urged by many parties to amend the Marriage Law. Yet, he said, amendment of the law would not automatically guarantee that underage marriages would not happen.
Meanwhile, Indonesian Planned Parenthood Association (PKBI) executive director Inang Winarso said that no comprehensive solution had ever been found to deal with problems related those aged between 15 and 24 years, including premarital sex.
He blamed the condition on a lack of attention by the state to this particular age group. "Is there any fund allocation or policy specially for teenagers? The answer is no," he said.
As a result, teenagers are modeled by companies that make them their market target. "Indonesian teenagers become consumeristic and individualistic," Inang said.
A local teenager, Ichsan Masyhuri, said that casual sex was common among his peers. "They would be surprised to find a teenager who had never had sex," said Ichsan, who is also an activist of Jari Mulia, an organization that deals with issues on reproductive health and HIV/AIDS.
In the 2013 World Population Situation Report entitled "Motherhood in Childhood, Facing the Challenge of Adolescent Pregnancy", the UNFPA also noted that some 7.3 million girls under the age of 18 in developing countries had given birth.