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"He makes some pretty reckless assumptions, going from 'It should come as no surprise that British Asian women are three times as likely to commit suicide than normal' to 'If only 300 cases are reported to the authorities, and most of them from the girls themselves, it becomes fairly obvious they want legal protection after exhausting all other avenues short of suicide.'"
This is not a reckless assumption. The British Journal of Psychiatry reports that the suicide rate of British Asian women 16-24 year old women was three times that of 16-24 year old women of white British origin because of "cultural pressures; conservative parental values and traditions such as arranged marriages may clash with the wishes and expectations of young women themselves." Human rights violations of girls and women everywhere have to stop regardless of the fear of perpetuating stereotypes. CEDAW needs to be ratified in the United States to stop the systematic rape, battering and murder of girls and women. International bodies such as the UN, CEDAW, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and Equality Now should eradicate human rights violations.
http://www.mind.org.uk/Information/Factsheets/Suicide/#Suicide_and_race_
Suicide and race
Race and cultural background can be major influences on suicidal behaviour. Patterns of suicide amongst Black and Asian people in the UK are not congruent with patterns of suicide amongst white people. For example, one study of young people of Asian origin in the UK found that the suicide rate of 16-24 year old women was three times that of 16-24 year old women of white British origin. This contrasts sharply with the suicide rates of young Asian men who appear to be far less vulnerable to suicide than young men from white British backgrounds. Asian women's groups have linked the high suicide rates amongst young Asian women to cultural pressures; conservative parental values and traditions such as arranged marriages may clash with the wishes and expectations of young women themselves.
http://www.hrw.org/women/
Abuses against women are relentless, systematic, and widely tolerated, if not explicitly condoned. Violence and discrimination against women are global social epidemics, notwithstanding the very real progress of the international women's human rights movement in identifying, raising awareness about, and challenging impunity for women's human rights violations. We live in a world in which women do not have basic control over what happens to their bodies. Millions of women and girls are forced to marry and have sex with men they do not desire. Women are unable to depend on the government to protect them from physical violence in the home, with sometimes fatal consequences, including increased risk of HIV/AIDS infection. Women in state custody face sexual assault by their jailers. Women are punished for having sex outside of marriage or with a person of their choosing (rather than of their family's choosing). Husbands and other male family members obstruct or dictate women's access to reproductive health care. Doctors and government officials disproportionately target women from disadvantaged or marginalized communities for coercive family planning policies.
