October 29, 2010
Argentinean photojournalist Walter Astrada -- with the help of an Alexia Foundation grant and in collaboration with Media Storm -- has created a 12-minute documentary about violence against women and the societal pressure exerted on Indian women to bear sons – a situation that is perfectly mirrored in Nepali society.
The film is not for the faint of heart. Nevertheless, I recommend it to all of my readers.
The undesirability of daughters originates from the belief that men make money while women, because of their expensive dowry costs, are a financial burden. As a result, there is a near constant disregard for the lives of women and girls. From birth until old age, women face a constant threat of violence and too frequently, death.
The numbers are staggering. Since 1980, an estimated 40 million women are “missing,” by way of abortion, neglect or murder. 7,000 female fetuses are aborted every day according to the U.N., aborted solely because they are girls. One dowry death is reported every 77 minutes. Countless others are never known.
The Indian government has tried to intervene. Dowry and sex selective abortions are illegal. Yet both practices still thrive, in large part because of deep-rooted cultural prejudices.
Today, eighty percent of Indian states are now facing a shortage of women. To compensate for this differential, young, unknowing women are bought from surrounding countries and sold to young bachelors. Not knowing a word of the language, these trafficked women now face the same kinds of violence as other Indian women.
Prize-winning WALTER ASTRADA joined Associated Press in 1999 and has worked in Bolivia, Argentina, Paraguay, Dominican Republic and other Caribbean countries. From March 2005 until March 2006 he worked as a freelancer for Agence France Presse in the Dominican Republic. In March 2006 he moved to Spain from where he is working as a freelancer. Currently he is working on a long-term project about violence against women.
Since February 2010, Walter has been represented exclusively by Reportage (Getty Images).
RUCHIRA GUPTA, talking head in film and president of Apne Aap (founded in 2002), a grassroots organization which has supported over 10,000 women and children trapped in or at risk of prostitution in India. She was awarded the Abolitionist Award by the UK House of Lords in 2007, won an Emmy for "outstanding investigative journalism" for her documentary, "The Selling of Innocents," and has been honored at the White House for her work to combat sex trafficking. She sits on the Steering Committee for the Planning Commission of the Government of India for the 11th Five-year Plan for Women and Children, and on the Working group of the Ministry of Women and Children. She is on the Advisory board of Asia Society, New York, Coalition against Trafficking in Women, Asia-Pacific, Cents for Relief, US, Nomi Network, US, Ricky Martin Foundation, and Vital Voices, Washington DC. Her testimony to the United States Senate had a direct role in the passage of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000.
She has worked in the United Nations for the last ten years and helped the governments of Nepal, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Myanmar, Indonesia, Kosovo, and the Philippines to develop National Action Plans and laws against human trafficking. She has written two manuals with UNODC and UNIFEM.
Additional film credits
Producer: ERIC MAIERSON
Associate Producer: SHREEYA SINHA
Executive Producer: BRIAN STORM
Additional remarks by Ruchira Gupta on protecting pimps and johns while further penalizing the female sex workers:
Ironically, the opposition to punishing johns and protecting the girls and women has come not from the sex industry but from foundation working to reduce HIV/AIDS. The HIV/AIDS management projects funded by these international Foundations, work in red-light areas and hire pimps and brothel managers as “peer educators” to gain easy access to the brothels for the purpose of condom distribution. They turn a blind eye to the little girls and adult women kept in a system of bondage and control, who cannot say “no” to unwanted sex let alone to unprotected sex. They are more interested in protecting male buyers of prostituted sex from disease rather than protecting women and girls from the buyers. These are the same solutions that colonialist powers used to control syphyllis in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Many of these foundations are based in your countries. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is one of them. CARE is another. Today you heard the presentation of a representative from CARE on how the organization educated young men to reduce gender based violence. However, when directly asked if CARE taught the young men that prostitution was gender-based violence he said: “No, the debate in my organization is still open if prostitution is violence against women.”
In practice, the debate in his organization is not open. By choosing not to list prostitution as gender-based violence in their trainings to young men, CARE has already decided where they stand. In fact, in India and Bangladesh CARE has been working actively to organize brothels owners, pimps and brothel managers as the “real” and “only” representatives of the sex industry. It has created a false notion of “ethical demand” among the young men they teach who now believe that it is alright to buy sex if they use a condom.
Their programs in India have actually increased the size of the sex industry, legitimized brothel managers and pimps as “peer educators”, increased the demand for prostituted sex by making condoms the only criteria on responsibility to women and girls and this has led to the increased trafficking of young girls.
For more information about Apne Aap contact:
Apne Aap Women Worldwide
www.apneaap.org
Ph: 91-11-24110056
D-56 Anand Niketan,
New Delhi, India 110021
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