Housewives make up over 50% of India’s female suicides

Context:

World Suicide Prevention Day (WSPD), celebrated annually on 10 September, is organized by the International Association for Suicide Prevention (IASP) and endorsed by the World Health Organization (WHO).

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• Aim: Raising awareness about the pressing problem, reducing the social stigma associated with it, and increasing overall awareness.
• The National Family Health Survey (2019­-21) highlights the challenges faced by married women, including limited mobility, restricted financial autonomy, and marital control, as well as physical, sexual, and emotional abuse in the hands of their spouses.
• The number of women who died by suicide in India reached a peak of 45,026 in 2021. More than half of them were housewives (Table 1).
• Over 30% of all suicides (men and women) were due to issues relating to family or marriage.
• In 2021, among the major States, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, and Karnataka featured at the top of this list.
• Table 2 shows that 35% of married women in the poorest 20% of households had faced physical or emotional or sexual violence, and less than half of them had sought help.

Places in News

Morocco

Context: 

A powerful earthquake of magnitude 6.8 struck Morocco’s High Atlas mountains leading to the death of over 2,000 people.

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• According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the oblique-reverse faulting at shallow depth within the High Atlas Mountain range caused the earthquake.
• The northward convergence of the African plate with respect to the Eurasian plate is a complex plate boundary.

About Morocco:

• Morocco is situated in the Maghreb region of North Africa.
• It has a northern coastline along the Mediterranean Sea and the western coastline, along with the Atlantic Ocean.
• The Strait of Gibraltar that lies between Morocco and Spain separates Africa from Europe and connects the Mediterranean Sea with the Atlantic Ocean.
• It shares land borders with Algeria to the east and Western Sahara to the south.