Seanad debates

Wednesday, 26 October 2011

Gender-Based Violence: Motion

 

11:00 am

Photo of Feargal QuinnFeargal Quinn (Independent)

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Perry, to the Chamber. I enjoy doing The Irish Times crossword every day because I am interested in vocabulary. Many of the new words I have heard in the past year are not very pleasant. I did not hear the word "gendercide" until last year but as Senator Mullen pointed out, it was used in a book title as far back as 1985. It really is a nasty word.

According to the newly published World Bank development report, there are 4 million missing women in the world in the past year. By that I mean these are females who have been aborted simply because of their sex. Deaths in childbirth account for about a third of the overall number of missing women. An even larger share derives from the 1.43 million girls missing at birth, mainly in China and India. An article in The Economist, entitled The War on Baby Girls, said: "It is no exaggeration to call this phenomenon gendercide."

Why does it happen? As has been well documented, male offspring are preferred in Chinese and Indian societies. Males who can work to bring in income are desirable and they bring higher social status. Smaller families are also preferred. The advent of technologies which allow parents to see the sex of their unborn child has resulted in unborn females being aborted in their millions like never before. This is illegal in places like India but still happens underground. Parents pay as little as €10 to get an ultrasound scan to determine the sex of their child. Doctors in India started advertising ultrasound scans with the slogan, "Pay 5,000 rupees [€110] today and save 50,000 rupees tomorrow". The saving was calculated on the cost of a daughter's dowry. Another aspect of this is the number of suicides of young women who discover they aborted an unborn male by accident.

To give some stark figures, around 120 boys are born for every 100 girls in China and India. In China, parents are willing to sacrifice unborn females in pursuit of a son. The result is that there are more than 1 million too few daughters relative to the natural level. This phenomenon is spreading rapidly. The World Bank says the number of missing girls has doubled in Europe and central Asia, mainly in the Balkans and the Caucasus, from a low base. The number has also risen in the Middle East and in east Asia outside China in places like South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan. It is a mystery as to why this is happening. There is also the related issue of girls being sold on to child traffickers, which we must not forget.

What are the implications? In January 2010, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences showed what can happen to a country when girl babies do not count. Its study found that one in five young men would be unable to find a bride because of the lack of young women, a figure unprecedented in a country not at war. In Asia, there are now 100 million more men than women. This figure will rise. Some experts believe the oversupply of men could result in higher crime rates, more bride trafficking, sexual violence and even female suicides.

This will rise further as the generations get even more lopsided. To give an example, the crime rate has almost doubled in China during the past 20 years of rising sex ratios. Having a massive male population is not a good recipe. In Asian societies, where marriage and children are the recognised routes into society, single men are outcasts. According to one German scholar, European imperial expansion after 1500 and Japan's imperial expansion after 1914 was the result of a male youth bulge.

What can Ireland do? We have to promote the value of girls internationally, pressure governments to encourage education, to abolish laws and customs that prevent daughters inheriting property and to support legislation that rewards having a daughter to correct the imbalance. We must also show how we corrected the male dominated public sector here and promoted mandated ratios of women in all grades in the public sector. While there are many other ideas we can promote, we must highlight and embarrass countries with these non-credible sex ratios. If that means reducing our development aid to them, so be it.

Ireland will take up the chairmanship of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, OSCE, on 1 January 2012. This important international organisation consists of 56 member states from Vancouver to Vladivostok. I believe this could be one of the multilateral forums in which Ireland could use its guiding role to influence countries on gendercide. The human dimension is one of the most important security dimensions with which the OSCE deals. The chairmanship would be one ideal way for Ireland to bring this issue to the fore. Will the Minister of State indicate whether this issue can be put high on the agenda for Ireland's chairmanship starting next year? Given that the problem of gendercide is rising in the Balkans and in the Caucasus states such as Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Serbia and Macedonia, and the OSCE's strong involvement in helping societies develop there, I believe we can make a difference.

Our Presidency of the EU, starting in 2013, should also be used to influence other countries and promote the concept at the United Nations. These are major international fora which we can use to make a tangible difference. Women are missing in their millions, either aborted, killed or neglected to death. We must do something. Will the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade use his office to make a difference? We cannot stand idly by with millions of girls missing. This is one of the great scandals of our times.

I do not believe the Government should have tabled an amendment to this motion as it does support the motion's principles. There must be some reason it avoided the term "gendercide" and used "infanticide" instead. Will the Government reconsider its amendment to this motion? Senator Mullen's motion stands as it is and should be accepted by the Government.

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