Save the Girl Child-00100

Save the Girl Child-00100, originally uploaded by Social Geographic.

GRACIA GIRL WITH HER YOUNGER BROTHER

"Save the girl child campaign by SOCIAL GEOGRAPHIC"
Photo: Firoz Ahmad Firoz -----------------------------------------

I don't love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
I love you as certain dark things are loved,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.
I love you as the plant that doesn't bloom and carries
hidden within itself the light of those flowers,
and thanks to your love, darkly in my body
lives the dense fragrance that rises from the earth.
I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you simply, without problems or pride:
I love you in this way because I don't know any other way of loving
But this, in which there is no I or you,
so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand,
so intimate that when I fall asleep it is your eyes that close.

-------- Pablo Neruda

According to one United Nations estimate, 113 to 200 million women are “demographically missing” from the world today. That is to say, there should be 113 to 200 million more women walking the earth, who aren’t. By that same estimate, 1.5 to 3 million women and girls lose their lives every year because of gender-based neglect or gender-based violence. We can point a finger at poverty. But poverty alone does not result in these women’s deaths; the blame also falls on the social system and attitudes of the societies.

India alone accounts for more than 50 million of the women who are “missing” due to female feoticide- the sex-selective abortion of girls, dowry death, gender-based neglect and all forms of violence against women.