End child marriage Now – female Muslim clerics cries out

A congress of female Muslim clerics in Indonesia has urged the government to end child marriage, organisers said Friday, in the first such fatwa by religious leaders in the country.

Participants at the three-day congress, recommended that the government raise the minimum age for marriage for women to 18, from 16 under the Muslim-majority country’s current marriage law.

“We call on the government to work seriously towards raising the minimum age of marriage for woman,” said Ninik Rahayu, general secretary of the congress organising committee.

Every year, one in four Indonesian girls gets married before the age of 18, according to government statistics and UNICEF.

Rahayu said the congress in Cirebon, attended by more than 800 participants and observers, was the first major gathering of female Muslim clerics.

Participants discussed issues such as women rights, gender violence, terrorism and environmental destruction, Rahayu said.

Child marriage is also one cause of pregnancy-related deaths in Indonesia, slowing the country’s progress to achieve its UN Millennium Development Goals on maternal mortality.

Attempts by non-government organisations and women’s rights activists to increase the marriageable age for girls to 18 have so far been unsuccessful.

Also, religious conservatism in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country, complicates matters.