NCW Rejects Finding That “India Is world’s most dangerous country for women”

The NCW today rejected the finding of a survey that India is the world's most dangerous country for women, and said the countries that have been ranked after India have women who are not even allowed to speak in public.

The Thomson Reuters Foundation, after a survey of about 550 experts on women's issues, has ranked India as the world's most dangerous country for women, followed by war-torn Afghanistan and Syria, due to the high risk of sexual violence.

National Commission for Women Chairperson Rekha Sharma rejected the survey report, claiming that the sample size was small and could not be representative of the whole country.

"The Commission rejects the survey in question. For a nation as big as India, with a population of approximately 1.3 billion, the sample size of the survey is not representative of the country as a whole," she said.

"Women are very aware in India of issues and there is no way that we could be ranked number one in such a survey. The countries that have been ranked after India have women who are not even allowed to speak in public," Sharma said, without naming a specific country.

The poll was conducted online, by phone and in person between March 26 and May 4 with an even spread across Europe, Africa, the Americas, South East Asia, South Asia and the Pacific.

The poll was a repeat of a survey in 2011 in which Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Pakistan, India, and Somalia were named as the most dangerous countries for women.

The survey asked respondents which five of the 193 UN member states they thought were most dangerous for women and which country was worst in terms of healthcare, economic resources, cultural or traditional practices, sexual violence and harassment, non-sexual violence and human trafficking.

Respondents also ranked India the most dangerous country for women in terms of human trafficking, including sex slavery and domestic servitude, and for customary practices such as forced marriage, stoning and female infanticide, the foundation said in a statement.

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There was no official response by the Ministry of Women and Child Development. (IANS)