Month: July 2011

It’s been a while since I linked to the Big Picture blog. One of their recent posts thought struck a nerve.   It was covering the world’s most dangerous countries for women.  It’s difficult to imagine that these are not hundreds of years ago, but now !

Targeted violence against females, dismal healthcare and desperate poverty make Afghanistan the world’s most dangerous country in which to be born a woman, with Congo a close second due to horrific levels of rape. Pakistan, India and Somalia ranked third, fourth and fifth, respectively, in the global survey of perceptions of threats ranging from domestic abuse and economic discrimination to female foeticide (the destruction of a fetus in the uterus), genital mutilation and acid attack. A survey compiled by the Thomson Reuters Foundation to mark the launch of TrustLaw Woman*, puts Afghanistan at the top of the list of the most dangerous places in the world for women. TrustLaw asked 213 gender experts from five contents to rank countries by overall perceptions of danger as well as by six categories of risk. The risks consisted of health threats, sexual violence, non-sexual violence, cultural or religious factors, lack of access to resources and trafficking.