As I was preparing for this article, I asked a very good friend who is Jewish if it was appropriate for me to use the term “holocaust” to portray the worldwide violence against women. He was startled by my question. But when I read him the figures in a 2004 policy paper published by the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed For-ces, he said yes, without hesitation.

One United Nations estimate says that between 113 million and 200 million women around the world are “missing.” Every year, between 1.5 million and 3 million women and girls lose their lives as a result of gender-based violence. As the Economist, which reported on the policy paper, put it last November, “Every two to four years the world looks away from a victim count on the scale of Hitler’s Holocaust.” How could this possibly be true?

Here are some of the factors: In countries where the birth of a boy is preferred, selective abortion and infanticide eliminate female babies; young girls die disproportionately from neglect because food and medical attention is given first to males; in countries where women are considered the property of men, their fathers and brothers can murder them for choosing their own sexual partners; the brutal sex trade kills uncounted numbers of girls; domestic violence is a major reason for the deaths of women in every country and; 6000 girls undergo genital mutilation every day, according to the WHO. Many die, and others live the rest of their lives in crippling pain.

But all these figures are estimates; registering precise numbers for violence against women is not a priority in most countries. Going forward there are three challenges: Women are not organised or united. Those in rich countries, who have attained equality under the law, need to mobilise to assist others. Only political pressure can lead to change.

Next, there are the forces of obsc-urantism that want to close the wo-rld off. The Islamists are engaged in reviving and spreading a brutal and retrograde body of laws. Wherever the Islamists implement sharia, women are hounded from the public arena, denied education, and forced into a life of domestic slavery.

Lastly, cultural and moral relativists sap our sense of moral outrage by defending the position that human rights are a Western invention. Men who abuse women rarely fail to use the vocabulary the relativists have kindly provided them. They claim the right to adhere to an alternative set of values - an “Asian,” “African” or “Islamic” approach to human rights. This mindset needs to be broken. A culture that justifies physical oppression is not equal to a culture that believes women have the same rights as men. An international tribunal should look for the missing women and girls. A serious international effort must urgently be made to register violence against women, country by country. And we need a worldwide campaign to reform cultures that permit this kind of crime. Hopefully, the Third World will embark on the path of peace and progress. Just as we put an end to slavery, we must end THe “gendercide.” — The Christian Science Monitor