Campaign Objectives
The 50 Million Missing Campaign was founded in December 2006 as an online, international, human rights campaign on flickr to raise public awareness on concerned issues and to spearhead action for change.
The idea was to launch a public platform for news postings, discussions and photos, a platform through which anyone could participate and directly engage in the issues concerning female genocide in India. Our flickr group, which grows everyday, now has more than a 120 discussion streams, and a photo pool of close to 10,000 photos of Indian women and girls as a powerful visual reminder of the fact that millions of faces like these have been deliberately eliminated from India’s population.
Do visit the site at http://www.flickr.com/groups/50_million_missing/
You can also contribute to the photo gallery or participate in the discussion streams.
Copyright © Hervé Blandin (foreground photo), Pam Kelso (design), Fernando Aguinaco (background photo)
The Goals of the campaign are as follows:
1. To Overcome Doubt and Denial:
Most people will acknowledge having heard of isolated cases of “dowry deaths” or female fetuses discovered in the dump of a hospital in India. But what is unknown to many is how these incidents have added up to create a mammoth scenario of a human rights disaster in India. The fact that about 50 million women have been systematically eliminated from India’s population – is a fact that is often met with doubt and skepticism, both within and outside India.
It is the goal of this campaign to universalize this fact through the distribution of information and the engagement of queries and doubts. We believe that acknowledgement is the first step towards change. It is impetrative that the female genocide in India be universally known and recognized before it can even be tackled.
2. To Overcome Defensiveness:
We recognize ‘defensiveness’ as a second obstacle to change. A section of the public will go to irrational extents to explain, to justify, and sometimes even condone the issues involved including female feticide, infanticide and dowry murders. This defensiveness can be in the name of national pride, culture, economics, illiteracy or religion.
To tip-toe around the issue of female genocide in India is not in India’s national interest – for not only is this a serious and flagrant human rights violation, but if allowed to continue unchecked it will lead to a situation of uncontrollable civil and social mayhem. Already, young girls are being kidnapped and trafficked across state boundaries to be sold as “brides” in regions where the gender ratio is so low that men can’t find partners. This situation will escalate if India’s social and legal systems don’t forcefully address and curb the issues at hand.
Hence it is the aim of this campaign to overcome defensiveness through constant engagement and dialogue. We believe that it is important for the people of India and the world at large to understand that a nation’s pride is not in defending violence but in combating it.
3. To Galvanize Urgent Action:
Our comprehension of the situation of female genocide in India, leads us to conclude that the primary cause is the social mindset. The elimination of potential daughters, be it through abortion or infanticide, as well dowry demands and murder of young women for dowry – occurs through all sectors of India – irrespective of class, economics, education and religion. Hence, what this calls for is a revolutionary overhaul in the nation’s basic mind-set.
However, a mindset that is rooted in 2000 years of culture and tradition could take many decades or even centuries to change. In the meantime, do we allow for the infanticides, sex selected feticides and the dowry murders to continue unhindered and escalating every year?
It is therefore the goal of this campaign to galvanize urgent action for the effective implementation of laws to arrest associated practices, and a commitment by the government of India to bring to a halt female genocide within an assumed time period.
4. To Engage the Collective Mindset:
As discussed in #3 a fundamental change in India’s collective mindset in context of gender and gender relationships, is the key to long term change in terms of female genocide. We plan to implement this goal in two mammoth steps:
Step I is an extensive, methodically designed and planned study of gender awareness, gender relationships, and gender-concept formation, across different sectors and communities in India, with control studies in other communities and countries.
Step II - Based on our results of the above study and the data analysis, we will implement future projects addressing community development, school curriculums, media, and government programmes to incisively target the re-education of the collective mindset.
5. To Provide Assistance for Victims:
As a part of our long-term plan, we aim to set up campus style community centers all over India that will provide comprehensive aid (medical, legal, psychological, educational, vocational, and social rehabilitation) to women victims of violence. We will also has have programs that cater to abandoned and/or orphaned girls and widows. Very importantly, the focus of these programmes will be not just about the individual triumphs of survivors, but their role in challenging and changing the status quo.
Petition
Please support this campaign by signing this petition and pass it on!
