Taking a Stand Against Practices That Harm Women

Throughout the world, practices that undermine the well-being of women endure. But like slavery and foot-binding, they constitute egregious violations of basic human rights.

• At least 130 million women have been forced to undergo female genital mutilation/cutting. Another 2 million are at risk each year from this degrading and dangerous practice.


• Killings in the name of 'honour' take the lives of thousands of young women every year, mainly in Western Asia, North Africa and parts of South Asia.
  
  
• Forced early marriage of young girls or adolescents is another practice that can cause lifelong psychological as well as physical problems, especially those resulting from early childbearing.

In most industrialized societies, although gender-based violence is officially condemned, it persists, implicitly sanctioned by messages in mass media.

In some developing countries, practices that subjugate and harm women - such as wife-beating, killings in the name of honour, female genital mutilation/cutting and dowry deaths - are condoned as being part of the natural order of things. Throughout much of Asia, a preference for male children results in the neglect and sometimes infanticide of girls, or their elimination by abortion in places where prenatal tests are available to determine the sex of the foetus.

And as conflicts among ethnic groups rage, women and girls have increasingly become pawns of war, and face rape and forced pregnancies. FGM/FGC, coerced sex and early marriage are also factors in the spread of HIV to women.

Eradicating long-standing traditional practices does not happen overnight. One way to begin, though, is by information and advocacy that raises public awareness and changes the climate of public opinion.