Trust Law contacted 213 gender experts from five continents to rank countries by analyzing six risks. The risks were health threats, sexual violence, non-sexual violence, cultural or religious factors, lack of access to resources and trafficking, Indian media reported on Wednesday.
In India, a whole gamut of human trafficking is run whereby women and girls are trafficked within and into India since they are most vulnerable into the sex trade. The enormous bulk of trafficked women and girls are poor, some belong to landless families, and most come from Dalit, adivasi or other low caste communities.
In 2009, India's then Home Secretary Madhukar Gupta estimated that 100 million people, mostly women and girls, were involved in trafficking in India that year.
India's Central Bureau of Investigation estimated that in 2009 about 90 percent of trafficking took place within the country and that there were some 3 million prostitutes, of which about 40 percent were children.
The purposes for human trafficking in India are numerous such as forced prostitution, marriage, domestic labour, bonded labour, agricultural labour, industrial labour, entertainment, begging, adoption, drug smuggling and peddling and organ transplants.
The 2007 U.S. Trafficking in Persons report identifies that the lack of co-ordinated national action undermines attempts to combat human trafficking. It recommends the urgent necessity to establish an effective national-level body to enforce the law strictly as these problems are made worse by the reported complicity of law enforcement officials in trafficking and related criminal activity.
As far as female infanticide and foeticide in India is concerned up to 50 million girls are thought to be "missing" over the past century due to female infanticide and foeticide according to the U.N. Population Fund.
According to the report this problem is creating gender imbalances and other serious problems that experts say will have far reaching consequences for years to come.
Experts in India who have analyzed the National Family Health Survey 2 (NFHS2) estimate that about 300,000 girls go "missing" in India each year. Other studies have put the number between 150,000 and 500,000.
In India, where the child sex ratio is calculated as the number of girls per 1,000 boys in the 0-6 years age group, the problem is severe. The 2001 Census shows there are only 927 girls per 1,000 boys, representing a sharp decline from 1961 when that number was 976. In certain parts of the country there are now fewer than 800 girls for every 1,000 boys.
Apart from India, Afghanistan has been placed as the world's most dangerous country for women and Congo has been placed second due to its horrific levels of rape. Pakistan grabbed the third place for its increasing domestic abuse and economic discrimination and Somalia ranked fifth respectively due to its genital mutilation and acid attacks.
