World Bank: Religious Courts are able to empower the poor
Jakarta | Badilag.net
The World Bank assessed the Religious Courts can play a major role in the empowerment of the poor, especially the women-headed households by providing a definite legal status.
“A definite legal status is useful to enable the poor to access government services, such as health insurance, subsidised rice, or even cash transfer.” The Senior Counsel of World Bank, Sonja Litz said in Jakarta, on Wednesday (19/09/2012), as quoted by Antaranews.com.
According to Sonja, such legal status can not be obtained by most poor women who become the heads of household. The number of women headed household based on the data of the Central Bureau of Statistics (BPS) has reached 10 million people or 14 percents of the 65 million families in Indonesia as a whole.
.Most of the women headed households are unable to access health services, subsidised rice, and cash transfer because they do not have legal marriage certificate and divorce act proving that they are the head of the family.
The children of these women are not able to enjoy the free education and only able to continue their study up to secondary level, because to enroll at the next level, they are required to have a birth certificate which can not be obtained.
The research conducted by Women Headed Household Empowerment (PEKKA) shows that 60 percent of the divorce of their members are not registered in the Religious Courts.
“At this point, the Religious Courts play an important role for the poverty alleviation programs, because they can provide the definite legal status for the women headed households who do not have divorce certificates.” Sonja said.
The National Coordinator of PEKKA, Nani Zulminarni stated that most of the women headed households are too poor to pay the court cost in the Religious Courts which reaches the average of IDR 800.000.
“In addition, they also live in remote areas far from the office of Religious Courts, that they can not afford the transportation cost.” Nani said.
The Survey conducted by PEKKA towards 12.000 women headed households in eight provinces indicates that the per capita income of 55 percents of the group are below the poverty line (IDR 248.000 per capita monthly) and 79 percents of them are below two dollars per day.
The women also still have an average of three dependent other than themselves.
On the other hand, the Religious Courts claimed that they have provided various forms of services to the unregistered groups in the state administration.
Wahyu Widiana, who was the Director General of the Religious Courts said the services include free legal aid and circuit courts.
Wahyu reported that in 2011, the legal aid program conducted in 46 Religious Courts has served more than 35 thousand people or 300 percents above the target.
“Meanwhile for the people who live in the remote areas, we have conducted circuit courts and have heard 18.500 cases. The amount is 60 percents above the target.” Wahyu said.
Wahyu expected that the divorce cases which have been settled in the Religious Court enabled the women headed households to access the goverment’s poverty alleviation program in the future.
[Mohammad Noor]