The 50 Million Missing Campaign

Organization Description:

The 50 Million Missing is an online, global campaign to end the ongoing female genocide (femicide) in India. It was founded by author and gender activist, Rita Banerji, in December 2006.

In three generations more than 50 million women have been selectively eliminated from India’s population through practices like female feticide, infanticide, intentional starvation and neglect of girls-under-five, dowry related murders, honor killings, "witch hunts" and the highest maternal mortality rate in the world precipitated by serial pregnancies and illegal female fetal abortions under unsafe conditions in the hankering for sons. This femicide is occurring across all sections of Indian society, irrespective of class, education, economics, religion and community.

The 50 Million Missing Campaign focuses on raising awareness and fostering public participation and discussions on issues that are contributing to India’s femicide. It has "basic information" pages on its website on all the major issues that are under consideration. It makes weekly postings and invites contributions on its blog Gender Bytes. It has started creating on-line photo exhibitions through the support of its flickr photo group, which has a membership of more than 2300 photographers from around the world, and a photo pool of more than 16000 photos of Indian girls and women. It also has discussion/support forums on flickr where it posts topics for discussion and debate, provides suggestions and advice on questions posted, and lobbys public support and aid for specific cases. The Campaign has recently also begun to build a public lobby group for its cause through through social networking sites like facebook and twitter. There is also a Q & A Forum, where anyone can post a question regarding this femicide, and it’s answered by Rita Banerji.

The Campaign is currently focusing on a four-pronged approach to pushing for its cause. This approach has come about through careful analysis of the situation through research, observation and a gender survey:

1) The dissemination of information to the public about the female genocide and what it entails. This included online information through its blogs as well as The Voice of The Campaign (VOC) Project. The VOC project actively seeks volunteer speakers around world, and provides them with a ready to use slide presentation and lecture, to address audiences at colleges, universities, women’s groups, neighborhoods and homes.

2) focusing on the elimination of the practice of dowry which the campaign recognizes as a fundamental factor contributing to feticide, infanticide, under-5 mortality, and dowry murders. See the "War on Dowry" project.

3) focusing directly on and challenging traditional social attitudes to gender, gender-based roles and gender relationships in Indian society.

4) lobbying through an online global petition for government and international commitment for accountability, and implementation of existent laws pertaining to dowry, dowry "deaths", feticide and infanticide.