Girl
Violence against girls

In many parts of the world, girls are at risk of specific forms of violence and abuse, such as sex-selective abortion, female genital mutilation, child marriage, child sexual abuse, honor killings.

In parts of the world, especially in East Asia, South Asia and some Western countries' girls are sometimes seen as unwanted; in some cases, girls are selectively aborted, abused, mistreated or abandoned by their parents or relatives. In China, boys exceed girls by more than 30 million, suggesting over a million excess boys are born every year than expected for normal human sex ratio at birth. In India, scholars estimate from boy to girl ratio at birth that sex-selective abortions cause a loss of about 1.5%, or 100,000 female births per year. Abnormal boy to girl ratio at birth is also seen in Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia, suggesting possible sex-selective abortions against girls.

Female genital mutilation (FGM) is defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) as "all procedures that involve partial or total removal of the external female genitalia, or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons." It is practiced mainly in 28 countries in western, eastern, and north-eastern Africa, particularly Egypt and Ethiopia, and in parts of Southeast Asia and the Middle East. FGM is most often carried out on girls aged between infancy and 15 years.

Child marriages, where girls are married at young ages (often forced and often to much older husbands) remain common in many parts of the world. They are fairly widespread in parts of the world, especially in Africa, South Asia, Southeast and East Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, and Oceania. The ten countries with the highest rates of child marriage are: Niger, Chad, Central African Republic, Bangladesh, Guinea, Mozambique, Mali, Burkina Faso, South Sudan, and Malawi.

Child sexual abuse (CSA) is a form of child abuse in which an adult or older adolescent uses a child for sexual stimulation. In Western countries CSA is considered a serious crime, but in many parts of the world there is a tacit tolerance of the practice. CSA can take many forms, one of which is child prostitution. Child prostitution is the commercial sexual exploitation of children in which a child performs the services of prostitution, for financial benefit. It is estimated that each year at least one million children, mostly girls, become prostitutes. Child prostitution is common in many parts of the world, especially in Southeast Asia (Thailand, Cambodia), and many adults from wealthy countries travel to these regions to engage in child sex tourism.

In many parts of the world, girls who are deemed to have tarnished the 'honor' of their families by refusing arranged marriages, having premarital sex, dressing in ways deemed inappropriate or even becoming the victims of rape, are at risk of honor killing by their families.
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