---

Implementation on CEDAW in Indonesia was still considered far from what was hoped for. There were 46 points that needed Government’s attention.

The opportunity for Indonesian government to inform the progress of the violence eradication and discrimination against women program on the last July 27, last year but still had not convinced fully the UN-CEDAW. Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women still criticize the implementation of CEDAW for more than twenty years after Indonesia ratified the agreement.

About the 46 concluding comments delivered by UN-CEDAW, the bottom line is that the Committee still felt worried on many aspects. One of the things highlighted was the Act No.1/1974 on Marriage. Besides the regulation on marriage, they also showed concern on female’s health, migrant workers, eradication of violence on women, discriminative regional rules. “Act on Marriage is being scrutinized by the CEDAW Committee,” said A.D. Kusumaningtyas from CEDAW Working Group Initiative (CWGI).

About Act on Marriage, for example. The Committee saw that this Act still adopted the stereotype view that put male as the head of a family and female as a housewife. Regulation on Marriage in Indonesia was also considered to admit polygamy. Besides that, the minimum age for legal marriage, which is 16, was also criticized. It meant that CEDAW had paid attention to marital problems twice, which was in 1998 and 2007 annual reports. “It should be questioned how far is the commitment from the government,” said Ning, a short for AD Kusumaningtyas.

In the concluding comments, CEDAW revealed their worries on the lack of progress in the process of marital and family law reformation. As the result, there were still discriminative regulation denying the equality of rights for male and female. Moreover the amendment on Act on Marriage had not been finished. “The revision of the Act is the stressing point,” added Ning.

Based on hukumonline record, actually the regulation for polygamy in the Act on Marriage had been judicially reviewed to the Constitutional Court. The Government, represented by Minister of Religious Affairs M. Maftuh Basyuni, stated that polygamy was not one of the Human Rights as pleaded by M. Insa (Petitioner of the judicial review). In the decision, the Constitutional Court on contrary stated that basically the Act on Marriage followed the monogamy principle. Even if the polygamy was allowed, it should go under very strict requirements.

Discriminative regional rules were also inspected. The CEDAW Committee pushed the government to review, observe, and evaluate Regional Acts in order to make sure that they were not against the national legislation, and guaranteed the protection of Human Rights. National Commission on Women, as stated by one of the members Sri Wiyanti Eddyono, also found some regional rules being discriminative on women. “if we analyze these regional rules, they are discriminated women directly or indirectly,” she said.

Law Reform

CEDAW recommendation in point 11 of the concluding comments also pushed the Indonesian government to set a high priority on the reformation of legislation or amendment of the Constitution that were still discriminative on women and against the CEDAW.

Director of Legislation Drafting Division of the Department of Law and Human Rights, Suhariyono denied the opinion saying that the government did not do anything. Related to the implementation of CEDAW, the government had issued among others Act No. 11/2005 on Ratification of ECOSOC Covenant; Act No. 12/2005 on Ratification of Civil and Politic Rights Covenant; Act No. 12/2006 on Citizenship; Act No. 21/2007 on Eradication of Human Trafficking, and Act No. 2 /2008 on Political Parties.

Even though so, Suhariyono admitted that there were some Draft Bills that became the government’s homework in putting end to discrimination against women; For example, Draft Bill on Health, and Draft Bill on Eradication of Race and Ethnic Discrimination. There were some problems that made the reformation of those legislation moved fast, one of which was the legislative process itself. “There have not been any agreement regarding the annual priority of prolegnas (2005-2009) on the Draft Bill submitted, lack of initiative and the discussion process of the Draft Bill that takes a long time (ineffective) become the problems,” he said.

Despite criticizing some points, that does not mean there is no positive appreciation from CEDAW Committee. The Committee considered positively the report that Indonesian government made on the efforts and hard work to erase the discrimination on Indonesian women and the existing of new Acts and policies in erasing the discrimination on women that had been mentioned before. Another appreciation is made because the Government have made gender mainstreaming in every level, including the forming of mechanism of gender mainstreaming.(M-1)

Source www.hukumonline.com

Photo: Courtesy of Constitutional Court Public Relation Doc.

Translated by: Yogi Djatnika

---