Former President Jimmy Carter Proposes Solutions for Violence Against Women

Jimmy Carter, the nation's 39th president, has been an outspoken critic of humanitarian causes since his presidency. Carter continues to draw attention to social injustices that affect the world's impoverished and disenfranchised through his foundation, The Carter Center.

During a recent stop to promote his 28th book, Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence and Power, Carter addressed the growing problem of domestic violence, human sex trafficking in the United States and abroad, and the reluctance of women to report incidents of abuse and rape. Legal systems around the world, including our own, he says, are partly to blame for an imbalance of power that tends to punish women as victims.

The following is an excerpt of a phone interview with Carter by book editor Ken Raymond that appeared in The Daily Oklahoman.

Q: You identify 23 actions that you and The Carter Center support in terms of promoting and protecting women. It's such a diverse and sweeping call for change. How do you think it can be accomplished?

A: It applies to the different kinds of abuse. When I talk about prostitution, I point out what's being done in Sweden. When I talk about spousal abuse in this country, I talk about what's being done very effectively in Massachusetts. And when I talk of abuse of girls at universities and colleges in America, I talk about what can be done to inspire or force university presidents and deans to bring these rapes to the attention of the authorities. The slavery issue is also one that affects the United States. We have about 100,000 girls who are sold into slavery in America every year. These are statistics from the U.S. State Department. Congress has refused to act on basic laws that other countries have adopted, that were promoted by the United Nations Security Council in some cases, the General Assembly in others. We have failed to have the implementation on the Abuse of Women Act.

Q: This book, in part, is an indictment of America's legal system which, as I read this, encourages violence against women. Explain that a little.

A: The abuse of women, students on university campuses, is horrendous in this country, and it's not addressed, and the same problem exists in the military. We have a horrible trade in women slaves here. About 800,000 women on a global basis are sold annually across international borders. Our own State Department estimated that 80 percent of those slaves are young girls sold into sexual slavery. Those things ought to be known. Where are you now in Oklahoma?

Q: Just outside of Oklahoma City.

A: Well, if you go to Oklahoma City, do you think you could find a brothel? Do you think you could buy sex if you really wanted to? Sure, you could. There's no doubt. The general presumption is 'Well, these girls are getting rich off of men. They're the ones who are culpable.' So every time a pimp is arrested, there are 50 girls arrested for prostitution. I've got a chapter in the book that covers that, that shows that in Sweden, they have found a solution to that problem. The Swedish model basically punishes the pimps and the johns and not the prostitute.

To read more about Carter's ideas for reducing violence against women, visit The Carter Center or purchase a copy of Call to Action at your local bookseller or Amazon.