March 06
India is the most unsafe place in the world for women, a newly-released report has said.
This was revealed in a poll conducted by Thomson Reuters Foundation titled ‘The World’s Most Dangerous Countries for Women’ which ranks India at number one, with Syria, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and Somalia also in the top five.
The results were based on interviews conducted with women across six key areas, namely healthcare, discrimination, cultural traditions, sexual violence, non-sexual violence and human trafficking.
Nations were graded on a scale of 1 to 10 on the basis of how women were affected by these six factors, with 10 being the highest a country could score.
“India was named as the most dangerous country for women after coming fourth in the same survey seven years ago,” said the report.
The world’s second most populous nation, with 1.3 billion people, ranked as the most dangerous on three of the topic questions – the risk of sexual violence and harassment against women, the danger women face from cultural, tribal and traditional practices.
Violence against women in India has caused national and international outrage and protests since the 2012 gang-rape and murder of a student on a bus in New Delhi, the report added.
As India’s rape epidemic gets worse by the year, critics have pointed fingers at Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government for not doing enough to protect women.
Seven years ago a Thomson Reuters Foundation experts’ survey found the five most dangerous countries for women were seen to be Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Pakistan, India, and Somalia.