Dalai Lama Convenes Inter-faith Meeting to Address Gender Violence

The Dalai Lama will organize a meeting with India's religious leaders in order to address the issue of rape, communal violence and other issues facing the country, a spokesmen to the leader said Tuesday.

"His Holiness has decided to come forward because he is concerned about the problems in India," said Gelek Namgyal, a spokesman. "The criminal violence against women, against children and the communal violence, he feels that he should do something practical and try to come together to help those in need."

India has received international attention following high levels of rapes against women, which have sparked protests across the country. 

Most recently, India attracted widespread condemnation from the international community following the brutal gang rape and murder of two teenage girls on May 28 in Katra village in the Badaun district of the province of Uttar Pradesh. 

According to the Indian National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) a total of 244,270 crimes against women were reported in India in 2012 as compared to 228,650 cases in 2011, which marks an increase of 6.4 percent during 2012.

Due to rise in violence against women, many important religious leaders are expected to attend the event, including the Hindu guru Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, a senior Muslim cleric, the archbishop of Bombay and the head of the Jewish community in Delhi, the statement said.

According to the NCRB, of the total 24,270 reported cases, a staggering 7,112 or 30 percent were girls up to 18 years of age. It is estimated that these statistics could be even higher due to under-reporting owing to socio-cultural factors. The rate of crime committed against women was 41.7 percent in 2012.