Miami Student

Issue date: 3/7/08 Section: Campus

New York Times columnist Nick Kristof speaks on the discrimination of women in developing and underdeveloped countries Tuesday afternoon in Hall Auditorium.

Two days after returning from Sudan, Nicholas Kristof trekked to Oxford to share his views on the discrimination of women in the third world.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist addressed sex trafficking, mass rape and the maternal health of women in third world countries in his speech, "The Second Sex in the Third World."

According to Kristof, the lecture marked the first time he has talked on this subject. He and his wife will be releasing a book on the topic early in 2009.

Kristof said the paramount moral challenge for the 21st century is gender inequity in developing and underdeveloped countries. He compared this to challenges in recent history, saying slavery was the prevailing moral challenge of the 19th century, as was totalitarianism in the 20th century.

"In most of the world, gender inequity is very much a matter of life and death," Kristof said.

Kristof said that one of the things he is notorious for was buying two girls from a brothel in Cambodia and taking them back to their home villages after interviewing them for a column.

Kristof explained that on an earlier trip to Cambodia as a reporter, he met two teenage girls in a brothel who became the focus of his article. He said the situation seemed incredibly unequal and even exploitative and left him very uncomfortable. He said he did not want to feel that way again, which is why he paid for the two girls.

"I got receipts from the brothel owners," Kristof said. "It's an extraordinary world where in the 21st century you can get a receipt for purchasing another human being."

According to Kristof, a lot of problems in the world have improved over time, but sex trafficking has worsened. Kristof cited globalization, the growth of markets in former communist countries and AIDS as reasons for this problem.

The second issue Kristof addressed in his speech is mass rape-especially in Darfur.

"If you killed people, (that leaves) an inconvenient pile of bodies that you (have) to explain later," Kristof said. "But there is such a stigma toward rape in the area, (that it) created a situation in which rape terrorized people more than everything else."

Continued...

Page 1 of 2 next >

Article Tools