ACT TO END FEMALE GENDERCIDE.
India’s massive gender gap has resulted in human trafficking. In a country where there are 37 million more men than women, girls are trafficked into brothels and also into villages as brides for men who have no women to marry. To fight trafficking, we must also fight gendercide in India.
Annually, the US State Department addresses trafficking in India in its Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report, holding India accountable for steps it is taking to reduce trafficking. The 2013 TIP Report recognized the link between trafficking and gendercide in India, stating that girls and women were “being sold or coerced into forced marriages in states with low female-to-male gender ratios.” The State Department did not further recognize gendercide as the root of trafficking, however. And since then, it has not further addressed India’s low sex ratios and the resulting trafficking. Because gendercide leads to trafficking, focusing only on trafficking is futile.
Our officials need to know you care about girls and women in India and you want the U.S. to take action to stop both gendercide and trafficking there. Please take action now. BE CERTAIN TO FILL OUT ALL FIELDS. INCLUDE YOUR ZIP CODE (OR INPUT YOUR COUNTRY IF NOT FROM THE U.S.) OR YOUR SIGNATURE WILL NOT BE VALID.
PETITION
Petition to Act to End Female Gendercide in India
Secretary of State, US Department of State
Dear Mr. Secretary:
The United Nations estimates that 50 million girls and women are missing from India’s population because of the practice of murdering females (genocide* also called gendercide). The United States has led the world in asserting basic human rights. The dastardly murder of a young girl simply because of her gender eliminates every right she has, including the right to life, asserted in the Declaration of Independence as fundamental. America must end its silence about the routine violence of female gendercide in India.
Extensive and irrefutable evidence proves that girls in India is are being terminated at a genocidal rate, including:
- The 2011 Indian Census shows that there are 37 million more men than women;
- The rate of female births continues to drop in states such as Haryana in which only 834 girls are born for every 1000 boys; and
- One in four girls does not live past puberty.
Experts in the field of trafficking have reported societies that tolerate gender-based violence and discrimination are more likely to perpetuate the problem of female trafficking. In India, the trafficking of girls and women is prevalent, because of the rampant discrimination of girls and women that has led to men outnumbering women by the millions.
Currently, because the United States recognizes that trafficking is rampant in India, and because India receives certain financial benefits from the United States, the Department of State requires India to report on its efforts to eradicate trafficking. Because female gendercide produces trafficking, addressing only trafficking is futile. If trafficking is to be eradicated in India, gendercide must also be confronted.
Therefore, we implore you as our nation’s spokesperson on matters international, to do the following:
1) Address the problem of gendercide in India in the annual Trafficking in Persons Report, determining whether the government of India has shown integrated efforts to prevent and respond to violence against women and girls, due to the connection between the two crimes (of gendercide and trafficking).
2) Advocate with the Congress that it require India, as recipient of American financial aid, to report annually on its efforts to combat gendercide just as it now reports its efforts to confront trafficking.
3) Assist the Indian government to address any stated needs to effectively combat the gendercide of females, a “gender group” within the meaning of the multilateral treaty.
Sincerely,
(Your Name)
* The United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines “genocide” as killing and certain acts “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.
*The Petition will be addressed properly to the appointed Secretary of State at the time of presentation.