More than 115 million widows live in devastating poverty
07:05, 23 June 2010
.. Posted in Development, Relief and Advocacy Efforts.. Link
More than 115 million widows live in devastating poverty.
This is all according to the report "Invisible Forgotten Sufferers: The Plight of Widows around the World," commissioned by the Loomba Foundation. It was launched Tuesday by Cherie Blair, wife of the former British prime minister.
"Across the world, widows suffer dreadful discrimination and abuse," Blair said. "In too many cases they're pushed to the very margins of society, trapped in poverty and left vulnerable to abuse and exploitation." She said many of these women are cheated out of their husbands' assets and property and expelled from their family home, and since they have no money, they can't support their children, "so misery is heaped on grief." Blair noted that women become widows when their husbands are killed in conflicts, die of diseases including HIV/AIDS, or are killed because they work in dangerous conditions, the only jobs available to many poor men. When their husbands die, she said, some women are required to be "cleansed," some are erroneously accused of murder or witchcraft, some are required to marry another member of the family, many are disinherited and forced out of their homes and many are raped.
The most dire consequences are faced by 2 million Afghan widows and at least 740,000 Iraqi widows who lost their husbands as a result of the ongoing conflicts by widows and their children evicted from their family homes in sub-Saharan Africa; by elderly widows caring for grandchildren orphaned by the HIV/AIDS crisis, and by child widows aged 7 to 17 in developing countries.
The report stressed that persecution against widows and their children is not limited to the developing world, noting that large numbers of widows are also found in Europe and Central Asia.
According to the report, the countries with the highest number of widows in 2010 were China with 43 million, India with 42.4 million, the United States with 13.6 million, Indonesia with 9.4 million, Japan with 7.4 million, Russia with 7.1 million, Brazil with 5.6 million, Germany with 5.1 million, and Bangladesh and Vietnam with about 4.7 million each.
Here's the AP story about this report.
Also see Empowering Women Everywhere - Essential to Development Success, a long list of resources that show women are disproportionately affected by povertySo, development agencies: what are YOU doing to address the plight of women in poverty, especially widows?
