India must urgently tackle child gender ratio “emergency,” UN report warns

The child gender ratio in India has reached crisis point and requires immediate action, a United Nations report has warned.

The study, Sex Ratios and Gender Biased Sex Selection: History, Debates and Future Directions,1 found that, despite India’s social and economic progress, the country faced a serious deteriorating trend in the gender ratio among children. This had fallen from 976 girls for every 1000 boys in 1961, to 927 in 2001 and to 918 in 2011.

The report, which focused solely on India, said …