The Genocide
Violence on women as well as discrimination against them as a group is a universal phenomenon. However, it is the perspective of this campaign that the conditions of violence on women in India are unique in scale, intensity and methods.
Close to 50 million women have been systematically eliminated from India. There are more than 25000 dowry related murders of young women every year, and thousands who don’t succumb to attempts to burn, hang or poison them, live crippled for the rest of their lives. Thousands of infant girls are routinely killed after birth by region and cultural specific methods — as doodh peeti (drowning in milk), strangling, burying in pots, or feeding husks of grain with honey. The mortality rate for girls under 5 is more than 40% higher than that for boys the same age and these girls are dying of starvation and deliberate medical neglect. They are being allowed to die — which is negligent homicide. One pregnant woman dies every 5 mintues because women are forced to undergo repeated pregnancies and abortions, and often subject to cheap and unsafe methods of abortion — which again is also negligent homicide as well as coercion. More so, despite existing laws a large section of the medical fratenity colludes with families to systematically eliminate about a million female fetuses and/or prevent their birth through other technolgies.
The violence on and homicides of women and girls in India are equivalent to female genocide in accordance to the definition of genocide under Article II in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide as adopted by Resolution 260 (III) A of the United Nations General Assembly on 9 December 1948.
The Article defines genocide as follows:
- (a) Killing members of the group;
- (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
- (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
- (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
Relevant Sites:
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide: UN, The Human Rights Web
Missing: 50 million Indian Girls: The International Herald Tribune
