12 women burned to death every hour in India

Yule E’s blog yesterday flagged up the shocking story of the Afghani equivalent of Angelina Jolie being forced into hiding because of the Taleban’s increasing dominance in the region, and the shocking story of girls in Mauritania being force fed.

Well today, we have more grim news about violence against women.  According to The Lancet, 12 women every hour are burned to death in India. Yes, you read that right – 12 every 60 minutes.  And more than half of them are aged between 15 and 34.

Here in the press office, we found that hard to believe when discussing it this morning, and we regularly come across horrific stories, so much so that I double-checked the story – and there it was on BBC News Online and in The Times.

According to the report a significant number of the deaths are caused by domestic violence, especially over dowry disputes.

Sadly this is just the latest evidence of violence against women in India – just a couple of weeks ago Greenie was writing on these very pages about the gang rape of a student in Delhi and Amnesty has also put reports out on the topic in the past.

And there remains the problem of female foeticide where girls are killed just for being girls.

The harsh reality is that violence against women has not gone away and for that reason Amnesty will continue to campaign on the issue.

Don’t be surprised if we blog a lot about women this week in the run up to International Women’s Day. Sadly there’s a lot to flag up at the moment.