Yesterday Iran began a 4-year term on the United Nations’ (UN) top women’s rights body.
Iran joined the Commission on the Status of Women, the ‘principal global intergovernmental body exclusively dedicated to the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of women’.
‘Electing the Islamic Republic of Iran to protect women’s rights is like making an arsonist into the town fire chief,’ said Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, a Geneva-based independent human rights group.
‘We call on the U.S., EU states, and all other democracies to end their silence — regardless of any nuclear deal with Tehran — and state for the record this is absurd, morally reprehensible, and an insult to the oppressed women of Iran. This is a dark day for women’s rights, and for all human rights,’ said Neuer.
‘Iran’s persecution of women is gross and systematic, both in law and in practice. The UN’s own secretary-general has reported on Iran’s ‘persistent discrimination against women and girls,’ said Neuer.
‘By elevating a misogynystic regime to its highest women’s rights body, the UN is sending a message that women’s rights can be sold out for backroom political deals,’ said Neuer, ‘and it betrays millions of female victims in Iran and elsewhere who look to the world body for protection.’
Iranian women’s rights activist Masih Alinejad tweeted ‘A regime that treats women as second class citizens, jails them for not wearing the compulsory hijab, bans them from singing, bars them from stadiums and doesn’t let them travel abroad without the permission of their husbands gets elected to the UN’s top women’s rights body.’
UN Watch says that at least four of the 15 EU and Western Group democracies—which include Australia, Austria, Finland, France, Latvia, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States—voted for Iran. UN Watch called on lawmakers to demand that their governments reveal how they voted.