Indonesia’s parliament has approved a far-reaching law setting punishments for sexual violence, after being spurred into action by a recent case in which an Islamic boarding school headteacher raped and made several students pregnant.

The legislation had languished for years amid arguments it has a liberal feminist ideology that contravenes religious and cultural values in the world’s biggest Muslim-majority nation.

The law recognises men and children can be victims of sexual violence. Indonesia’s criminal code, a legacy of the Dutch colonial era, recognises only rape and lewd crimes committed by men against women, and does not have provisions for restitution or other remedies for victims and survivors.

Nine forms of sexual violence are recognised in the law: physical and non-physical sexual harassment, sexual torture, forced contraception, forced sterilisation, forced marriage, sexual slavery, sexual exploitation and cyber sexual harassment.

In addition to acknowledging sexual violence as punishable criminal acts, the law has provisions for protection and recovery for the victims.

Of the parliaments nine political parties, only the conservative Muslim-based Prosperous Justice Party, known as PKS, rejected it, as they wanted the bill to prohibit extramarital sex and homosexual relations.

“Our rejection is part of our struggle to fight for the prohibition and punishment of perpetrators of adultery and sexual deviations which are ultimately not included in the bill,” said Al Muzzamil Yusuf, a legislator from PKS.

The law was passed a week after an Indonesian high court sentenced an Islamic boarding school headteacher to death for raping at least 13 students over five years and making some of them pregnant.

Several girls were 11 and 14 years old and were raped over several years, drawing a public outcry over why he was not caught earlier.

President Joko Widodo in January appealed to the House of Representatives to speed up deliberation of the sexual violence bill as it has languished in the legislature since 2016, as critics said parliament had “no sense of crisis”.

“The protection of sexual violence victims should be our common concern which should be urgently addressed,” Mr Widodo said.

The bill was initiated by the National Commission on Violence Against Women in 2012, and calls for it to be fast-tracked followed the gang rape and murder of a 13-year-old schoolgirl by 14 men in Bengkulu in 2016. It soon stalled due to the resistance from PKS and Islamic groups.