Studies show that social initiatives such as access to a formal education and sexual health education, as well as the promotion of gender equality are essential to ending child marriage.
Written by Nadira Irdiana, The Jakarta Post
In Indonesia, one out of nine girls marry before their 18th birthday. It’s a statistic that puts Indonesia in the top ten countries with the highest number of child brides.
Last week, the Indonesian parliament agreed to raise the minimum age for women to marry from 16 to 19 years old in an attempt to curb child marriage.
Even though that decision is an important step towards ending child marriage, lessons from India prove it is not enough.
In India, child marriage persists even though the legal age for women to marry has been 18 since 1978.
India has the highest absolute number of child marriages in the world due to various factors, including the lack of access to education and rigid gender norms.
