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UN backs global campaign to eradicate violence against women
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A senior UN official has pressed for world action to protect women's rights on the eve of an international day of action to stamp out violence against women, including "honor" killings, genital mutilation and gang rape.
"We are working with partners to end impunity, to promote and protect the rights of women, including the right to sexual and reproductive health, and to foster equal opportunity, participation and decision- making," said UN Population Fund (UNFPA) Executive Director Thoraya Ahmed Obaid. She made the remarks in a message ahead of this years International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, during which a 16-day, UN-backed campaign against the problem is to kick off.
The UNFPA will join with rights organizations around the world to focus greater attention on such pervasive human rights violations and make recommendations, including legislative reforms and providing safe havens for girls escaping forced marriages. UNFPA said it plans to highlight five under-reported types of gender-based violence: |
-- Bride-napping: the abduction, rape and forced marriage of young women throughout Central Asia.
-- Breast-ironing: a traditional practice in some West African countries involving crushing the breasts of young girls in order to deter male attention.
-- An epidemic of traumatic fistula in Africa, often caused by gang rape and forced insertion of foreign objects into the rape victim, tearing the tissues between the birth canal from the bowel and/or the bladder and leading to incontinence and ostracization.
-- The ongoing murder and mutilation of women in Guatemala under a cloak of media silence and official neglect.
-- The forced marriage of girls to older men in the world's poorest nations, which means the girls cannot complete their education and are at greater risk of being exploited and contracting sexual infections, including the HIV virus that causes AIDS.
Among common examples of violence targeting women, UNFPA cited the following:
-- Thousands of young women are killed every year in the name of "honor" in western Asia, north Africa and parts of south Asia.
-- At least 60 million girls who would otherwise be expected to live are "missing" due to sexselective abortions or neglect.
-- At least 130 million women have been forced to undergo female genital mutilation, with two million more at risk each year. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour meanwhile singled out the plight of women migrants who are often victims of trafficking or other forms of exploitation.
"Local and supposedly 'traditional' forms of violence against women, such as female genital mutilation or forced marriages, globalize as well, moving along with their potential victims," Arbour said in a message for International Day.
"These human rights violations are not inevitable consequences of women's migration," she added.
"They can be curbed if states are truly committed to protecting migrant women against violence, trafficking and exploitation, without denying them the option to migrate legally, if they choose to."
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