Children are the mandate and gift of God Almighty, who will act as the nation's next generation. Therefore every child must get protection. The statement was conveyed by the Minister of Women Empowerment and Child Protection (PPPA), Gusti Ayu Bintang Darmawanti in her keynote address at the launch of the National Marriage Prevention Strategy (Stranas PPA), at the Pullman Hotel, Jakarta, (4/02).
Gusti Ayu also appreciates BPS for collecting, processing and publishing child marriage data in Indonesia at the national and provincial levels. "Going forward, I hope BPS can also produce data at the district / city level that is useful as input for the service intervention efforts undertaken at the district / city level," he said.
Earlier, in his remarks the Minister of PPN / Bappenas Suharso Monoarfa, said that in the past 10 years, the practice of child marriage in Indonesia had decreased by 3.5 percent. However, this decline is still relatively slow and a systemic and integrated effort is needed to reach the target of 8.74 percent in 2024 and to 6.94 percent in 2030.
Whereas BPS's Director of People's Welfare Statistics, Gantjang Amanullah, explained that if the prevention of child marriages fails then there will be eight SDGs indicators affected, mainly related to health, education, poverty, and so on. Gantjang further explained that according to the results of the 2015 SUPAS projections it was estimated that the marriage of Indonesian girls would reach 1.2 million, making Indonesia one of the 10 highest countries in the world. "In terms of the number of child marriages, Indonesia is number one in the world. Remember that Indonesia's population is number four in the world, "he stressed.
In this event, the publication of "Prevention of Child Marriage: Acceleration that Cannot Be Delayed" was published by the Ministry of PPN / Bappenas, Unicef, Puskapa, and BPS.
