Harleen Walia
(July, 2019)
Looking at the rise of incidents of sexual abuse and sexual assault, India undoubtedly is one of the most unsafe country in the world for solo women travellers. The Women’s Danger Index placed India at 9th spot with South Africa being deemed as the most dangerous of all the destinations. The tag of the safest country for women traveller has been given to Croatia.
The Women’s Danger Index was conducted by two travel bloggers – Asher and Lyric Fergusson, keeping in mind the eight crucial factors while working on the report. These factors included – Safe to walk alone at night?, intentional homicide of women, non-partner sexual violence, intimate partner violence, legal discrimination, global gender gap, gender inequality and violence against women attitudes.
The travel bloggers found South Africa to be worst at violence against women, homicides and how safe a woman feels as she walks on the road, especially at night. They marked Thailand as the worst in South-east, which they said is popular with backpackers, but also the worst for attitude towards violence against women.
Among the western countries, United States of America has been stated as the worst considering the homicide rates and the violence by intimate partner. The countries like United Arab Emirates and Iran ranked at the top spots for their discrimination against women.
According to the SDG Gender Index 2019, a whopping 2.8 billion women and girls live in countries which are not doing well to improve their quality of living.
In many of Middle East and North-Africa countries, women get arrested for filing cases against sexual harassment. Women are sometimes arrested for adultery or sex outside marriage if they report rape. This often keeps them away from filing complaints and hence the statistics available regarding such crimes aren’t much reliable.
According to the Thomas Reuters Foundation report published last year, India is one of the most dangerous countries in the world for woman, keeping in mind the unending list which includes – sexual violence, human trafficking, forced labor, forced marriage, and sexual slavery. According to the survey, India is also one of the most dangerous country in the world for cultural traditions that impact women, citing acid attacks, female genital mutilation, child marriage and physical abuse.
