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UN Campaign Takes On Violence Against Women
Reuters
Monday 25 February 2008
United Nations - The United Nations launched on Monday a campaign to combat
violence against women and girls, calling it a global scourge affecting a third
of the world's female population.
"At least one out of every three women is likely to be beaten, coerced
into sex or otherwise abused in her lifetime," U.N. Secretary-General Ban
Ki-moon told a meeting of the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women.
"Through the practice of prenatal sex selection, countless others are
denied the right even to exist," he said.
In India, female infanticide and the deliberate abortion of female fetuses
are illegal but still prevalent as boys are traditionally preferred to girls
as breadwinners, and families have to pay huge dowries for their daughters'
marriage.
Ban said the weapons of war in the 21st century included rape and other forms
of sexual violence and the kidnapping of children who are forced to be soldiers
or abused as sex slaves.
Ban urged women's groups, men across the globe, the private sector and U.N.
member states to help the new initiative succeed. But he added that every country
will have to adopt its own measures to address violence against women.
The campaign will run until 2015, which is also the deadline for the U.N. Millennium
Development Goals aimed at halving poverty.
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(Reporting by Louis Charbonneau,
editing by Stuart Grudgings).
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