From sexual slavery to domestic abuse, violence against women is the world's most common human rights violation.

For a shocking number of women all over the world, liberation is just a word in the dictionary. Trapped in cycles of violence, they live amidst deep-rooted gender inequality, deprived of their very basic human freedoms. Violence against women affects half the world's population. It crosses cultures, countries, continents, classes, income and education levels. And five years after the UN's Beijing Conference on Women, the latest report from the UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre in Italy still paints a very grim picture.

In India, dowry marriages (where the bride's father pays a sum of money to the groom-to-be) are now banned, yet despite strict laws, dowry-related violence continues. And if a dowry doesn't satisfy the groom, a bride might pay with her life.

"Now men actually draw up lists of things that they want like a television, a cycle, gold jewelry, a flat, or whatever," explains Ruchira Gupta of UNICEF. "Sometimes fathers have to get into debt to provide for the dowry. And if the dowry is not enough, kerosene is poured over the girls and they're burned to death, or they're pushed into ovens or thrown off balconies. Then the boy marries again for another round of dowry."

Sexual Slavery

The world's fastest-growing crime is sex-trafficking which is rampant everywhere from Albania to India. Each year, up to two million young girls and women are shipped off to be sex slaves in more affluent western destinations like the U.S., Canada and Britain. Sometimes an impoverished father will decide to sell a young daughter to help feed his remaining children.

"It's total bondage," Ruchira Gupta says of sexual slavery. "The girls are aged thirteen and they're locked up, made to service twenty clients a day, raped and beaten. By age 35, they're ready to die because they're disease-ridden, they have HIV, two children, no old-age savings. Some places are sending countries and some are receiving countries. So no country is pure."

Female Genital Mutilation

Female genital mutilation (FGM) is another atrocity. Up to two million girls a year have part or all of their genitalia removed with approximately 130 million women globally believed to have endured this excruciating procedure. Practiced in 28 African nations and in some parts of Asia and the Middle East, it can lead to death and infertility.

One piece of hopeful news: a group of brave women in a Senegal village successfully fought to eradicate FGM. Now 600 Senegal villages have followed suit and the women have been invited to speak in other African countries.

Sex-selective abortions and high infanticide rates are problems in cultures where boys are prized and girls considered a liability. In one Bombay hospital, 95.5% of aborted fetuses were found to be female. As a result, amniocentesis tests are now banned in India, yet many clinics still operate brazenly.

U.S. Domestic Violence

In the United States, the focus is on domestic violence. 28% of U.S. women in one study had experienced at least one episode of physical violence with their partner and an estimated 20-50% of women and girls worldwide have experienced domestic violence.

In only 44 of the world's almost 200 nations is domestic abuse illegal and prosecution is always difficult. Because the old belief that interfamilial abuse is a private family matter persists, re-education is vital. While she was the U.S. representative to the UN Commission on the Status of Women, Maureen Reagan, daughter of ex-president Ronald Reagan, made ten trips to Africa. She attended the groundbreaking 3rd World Conference on Women in Nairobi in l985 where previously taboo subjects like genital mutilation were first mentioned.

"There's no question women are victims, from the immolation of women in India to just run of the mill wife-beating here in the U.S., to genital mutilation," she says. "It's going on everywhere because women are considered weaker, and in many cases property.

"I myself was a victim of domestic violence. I wrote about that in my book, 'First Father, First Daughter', not because I wanted to become a poster child for domestic violence but because I wanted people to realize that it can happen to anybody and that we have to be strong enough to break the cycle."

Indeed, the battered women issue is so serious that in l999, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention funded the National Violence Against Women Prevention Research Center. Linda Williams Ph.D., co-director of the Wellesley Centers For Women facility at Wellesley College, Mass., is working on a five-year study that will involve 1,000 families and help determine the most effective ways to break cycles of domestic abuse.

"There's a big barrier to understanding the problems of sexual assault by intimate partners," Williams explains, "and often you can't use the word rape because people think that happens only outside of marriage. We are really talking about sexual activities that are forced due to threat, or physical force, or violence."

Global Abuse Against Women

With a study by Johns Hopkins School of Public Health finding that 1 in 3 women around the world is beaten, abused or coerced into sex at some point, usually by someone known to them, women have a long fight ahead. Yet UNICEF's Ruchira Gupta sees cause for optimism. "There's more debate and dialogue about women's rights now," she says, "and suddenly, women don't feel isolated any more."

World At A Glance

For information on campaigns you can support go to www.unicef.org.

Sue Russell is a Los Angeles-based, internationally syndicated journalist. Sue has reported on a wide range of beauty, fashion and health related topics. Her in-depth investigative features have appeared in Redbook, Good Housekeeping, Woman's World, Marie Claire, Hello, The London Daily Telegraph and countless others. In addition, Sue is the co-author of Sensual Beauty with Britt Ekland and Star Mothers: The Moms Behind The Celebrities, with Cher's mother, Georgia Holt, and Phyllis Quinn.

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