Mass Murder of Women

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I'm bringing a horrible story to this blog today...

A story about how "Every two to four years the world looks away from a victim count on the scale of Hitler's Holocaust."

A story I first saw in the excellent blog, Would Your Mother Be Ashamed?, then followed into The Christian Science Monitor.

Here are some of the facts:

• "In countries where the birth of a boy is preferred, selective abortion and infanticide eliminate female babies.

• "Young girls die disproportionately from neglect because food and medical attention is given first to males.

• "In countries where women are considered the property of men, their fathers and brothers can murder them for choosing their own sexual partners.

• "The brutal international sex trade kills uncounted numbers of girls.

• "Domestic violence is a major reason for the deaths of women in every country.

• "Six thousand girls undergo genital mutilation every day, according to the World Health Organization. Many die, and others live the rest of their lives in crippling pain."

This sickens me. It's been going on for millennia and it's intolerable!

There have been many efforts to get at the roots of the problem and explore methods to eliminate this pernicious "gendercide". One of the best I've found was: A summary report of a Symposium on Strategies for Creating Violence-Free Families, initiated by the Bahá'í International Community and co-sponsored by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), and the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM).

In that document, it's said:

"The links between violence in the family and social, structural and political violence are inescapable."

Feeling helpless about social injustice brings me to my best human refuge and first means of defense against hopelessness--Prayer...

Rich Kids + Poor Kids = Our Kids

There have been a number of posts here covering the issues of children. You can find some of them by clicking on the words in our Tag Cloud over in the sidebar.

Today's post was sparked by an article on the OneWorld site entitled, UNICEF report on childhood in industrialised countries.

At first I wondered why all that time and money was spent on assessing kids in the rich countries. Then it dawned on me that seeing the sad plight of children in the "best" countries on Earth could spur action to help All children.

Another thought I had was: Why does it take an official study to "prove" what most of us already know? I'm sure there's someone out there who could supply a rational reason but it'll still amaze me...

If you want to bypass the commentary about the report and read the original, it's available as a .pdf file: Report Card 7, Child Poverty in Perspective: An Overview of Child Well-being in Rich Countries.

OneWorld is a dynamite site with a wealth of information you'll rarely see in mainstream media.

Here are a few links from a sidebar of their article:

Other stories on Child poverty full listing

	Disparities affecting children cloud economic good news story
	A quarter of the world’s children seriously underweight
	UNICEF, MSF and WFP join forces to save children’s lives in Niger