Female foeticide, due to son preference, is happening in countries with no prior history of such practices

NEW DELHI (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - The practice of aborting female foetuses due to a preference for sons is an "epidemic" which is spreading beyond countries such as India and China to Eastern European nations, a senior United Nations official warned Monday.

Luis Mora, chief of the gender branch at the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA), said research in the last few years has found that a desire for sons and access to technology were largely responsible for the Caucasus region, along the the European-Asian border between the Black and Caspian Seas, having amongst the highest rates of sex selection globally.

"For many years, we have been looking at son preference and sex selection from a point of view that has very much concentrated on the cases of India and China," Mora told the 2nd MenEngage Global Symposium, a four-day conference here on involving men and boys in gender equality.

"But we have learned in the last years that India and China are no longer the exceptions as such. We have seen how discrimination, son preference and all the related issues have progressively expanded to countries we never before thought could practice sex selection, such as the Eastern European countries."

FEMALE FOETICIDE COMMON IN NATIONS WITH NO PRIOR HISTORY

Mora said the fact that female foeticide was happening in countries which previously had no history of such practices, such as Albania, Kosovo and Macedonia, indicated that gender discrimination was an "epidemic" comparing it to the deadly Ebola virus.

According to a August 2013 study by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, biologically 105 boys are born for every 100 girls. Yet in Armenia and Azerbaijan more than 115 boys are born for every 100 girls, and in Georgia the ratio is 120 males for every 100 females.

As a result, the UNFPA estimates that in countries such as Armenia, nearly 93,000 women will be missing by 2060 if the country's high pre-natal sex selection rate remains unchanged.

Gender experts say the patriarchal structure is one of main reasons for the skewed sex ratio. An "abortion culture" inherited from the Soviet period and easy access to technologies allowing parents to know the sex of their child before birth are other important factors.

"I think this is a warning," said Mora. "Behind this situation there is a strong and critical warning about how gender inequalities, violence, son preference and other harmful practices can really become universal."

(Reporting by Nita Bhalla, Editing by Lisa Anderson)

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