The Religious Courts are an Important Avenue
for Women Seeking Justice
Jakarta | badilag.net
“In Indonesia, the religious courts are an important avenue for women seeking justice. Recognizing this, the Supreme Court is working in partnership with civil society to enhance access and monitor their performance”, UN Report said.
A few days ago, UN Women, released its first report on progress of the world’s women 2011-2012. UN Women is the United Nations organization dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women. It was created by the United Nations General Assembly in July 2010.
For many years, the UN has faced serious challenges in its efforts to promote gender equality globally. Gender inequalities remain deeply entrenched in every society. Women lack access to decent work and face occupational segregation and gender wage gaps. They are too often denied access to basic education and health care. Women in all parts of the world suffer violence and discrimination. They are under-represented in political and economic decision-making processes.
Therefore, UN Women was created to address such challenges. UN Women has some important duties such as elimination of discrimination against women and girls, empowerment of women and achievement of equality between women and men as partners and beneficiaries of development, human rights, humanitarian action and peace and security.
According to the UN Women’s report, in Indonesia, legal registration of marriage and divorce is not only important for women’s rights within the family, it is also essential for accessing public services. Marriage certificates are often needed to obtain birth certificates for children, which are required to register for school and to claim inheritance rights. For women to access government benefits targeted at poor households, legal divorce documents are needed to prove eligibility.
Members of NGO called PEKKA (Women Heads of Household) faced some serious obstacles to bring their family matters to the Religious Courts. They did not only face problems of the cost but also the far distance from their home to the Religious Courts. To overcome their big obstacles, the Religious Courts in Indonesia have provided some important legal aid programs, namely circuit court, prodeo cases (waiving court fees) and legal aid post. And over the last two years, the budget for religious courts has been increased by $3.5 million, an 18-fold annual increase.
The Supreme Court has also developed a web-based data system and SMS Gateway. The purpose of the system is to communicate data between 372 Religious Courts and the Directorate-General for Religious Courts and to monitor progress of services.
For more detail see page 75 of on the first UN Women’s report. And it can be downloaded here.
(Arijaya)