Over 115 Million Widows Live in Poverty Worldwide

Irrational or otherwise, I live in fear of being widowed. It no doubt comes in part from being so close to my grandparents and watching my maternal grandma live without my grandpa for the past decade. At 91, she has pretty severe dementia, but I can't help wondering if her condition is exacerbated because she's alone. She only ever has two things to say: "When are you coming to visit?" and "I miss your grandpa."

My gram is okay, all things considered. She lives in a nice facility where they cook for her, dispense her medication, and, if she goes missing, they find her. A lot of her friends live in the same assisted housing complex, so she's surrounded by familiar faces. But she's also quite the exception these days, and that frightens me even more than the prospect of aging alone.

A new study commissioned by The Loomba Foundation and headed up by Cherie Blair, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair's arguably better half, points out that there are currently nearly 245 million widows worldwide. Even more startling, over half of them — or 115 million and counting — currently live in poverty. No surprise, the most profoundly affected live in war-torn regions like Afghanistan and Iraq, where women have lost a combined 2.74 million men to conflict fatalities. Certain areas in Africa have high rates of widowhood thanks to HIV/AIDS wiping out large parts of the male population. Child brides are also affected, with girls as young as seven becoming widows. As of 2010, parts of Asia and Europe have striking numbers of widows with 43 million in China, 42.4 million in India, and 13.6 million in the United States. Japan, Russia, and Germany follow close behind.

As if losing your partner and battling that grief wasn't hard enough, widows are social outcasts in many cultures, traded and married off to other men in the family, disinherited, psychologically tortured, raped and beaten, and sometimes killed. Because they are persecuted outcasts, widows are often most easily preyed upon my traffickers and sold into slavery and prostitution.

Widows and their children are often caught in a cycle of poverty. Young children go to work to help support the family, dropping out of school. They become more susceptible to child marriage, forced labor, and sexual assault. 1.5 million widows' children die before their fifth birthday.

Raj and Veena Loomba started The Loomba Foundation in 1997 to honor Raj's mother, Shrimati Pushpa Wati Loomba, who was widowed at 37 and cared for her 7 children alone. Even though she did not have a formal education, Shrimati was able to educate all of her children on her own and empowered them to escape the poverty many widows and their children face. As a result, The Loomba Foundation has been pushing for a U.N.-recognized International Widows Day for several years now. An obvious human rights issue, the staggering number of widows living in unsafe, impoverished conditions worldwide should be enough to alarm anyone with grandparents, elderly friends, and well, anyone who hopes to grow old in our modern world.

Sign this petition and urge the United Nations to support an International Widows Day on June 23. Poor widows face myriad hardships, and it's time to show them we're serious about respecting and honoring their rights.

H/T/ Poverty News Blog

Photo Credit: babasteve