Wills Point, Texas – Gospel for Asia (GFA) Special Report – Discussing the plight of widows worldwide – raising awareness of the problems of widowhood as they face tragedy, discrimination, and suffering.
A Day for the Plight of Widows Raises Awareness
In response to stories like these, the Loomba Foundation organized the first International Widows Day in 2005 to raise awareness of the problems of widowhood. The foundation selected June 23 for the observance because on that day in 1954 the mother of the organization’s founder, Lord Loomba, became a widow.
By the sixth year, 10 nations held observances. In December 2010, the United Nations General Assembly formally adopted June 23 as International Widows Day, calling on member states, the UN system and other organizations to give special attention to the situation of widows and their children.
Considering the average widow has three children and six other family members, the wider impact affects more than a billion people, about one-seventh of the world’s population.
A series of reports tied to the day give further evidence of the difficulties facing widows:
In 2001, the UN had issued a report in which it said there is no group affected more by the “sin of omission” than widows:
“They are painfully absent from the statistics of many developing countries, and they are rarely mentioned in the multitude of reports on women’s poverty, development, health or human rights published in the last 25 years.”
The UN says widows in many countries often confront denial of inheritance, land rights and other forms of abuse; widows can be evicted from their homes and abused or even killed, sometimes by family members.
Read the Rest of the Report on Patheos.com
Widows Worldwide Face Tragedy, Discrimination: Part 1 | Part 3
This article originally appeared on gfa.org
To read more on GFA Digital Media Room on widow’s plight worldwide, go here.
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