Exclusive: U.N. Elects Iran to Commission on Women's Rights
The United Nations Economic and Social Council has elected Iran to serve a four-year term — beginning in 2011 — on the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW). The U.N. calls the Commission “the principal global policy-making body” on women’s rights and claims it is “dedicated exclusively to gender equality and advancement of women”. Yet Iran was elected by acclamation. It was one of only two candidates for two slots allocated to the Asian regional bloc – in other words, a fixed slate and a done deal. This, to a theocratic state in which stoning is enshrined in law and lashings are required for women judged immodest.
Women in Iran lack the ability to choose their husbands, have no independent right to education after marriage, no right to divorce, no right to child custody, have no protection from violent treatment in public spaces, are restricted by quotas for women’s admission at universities, and are arrested, beaten, and imprisoned for peacefully seeking change of such laws.
“In the past year, it has arrested and jailed mothers of peaceful civil rights protesters,” wrote three prominent democracy and human rights activists in an op-ed published online by Foreign Policy Magazine. “It has charged women who were seeking equality in the social sphere — as wives, daughters and mothers — with threatening national security, subjecting many to hours of harrowing interrogation. Its prison guards have beaten, tortured, sexually assaulted and raped female and male civil rights protesters.” More here.
This is the single, most important story in a post-2009-election Iran, but I have yet to see it covered in any major network/newspaper. The atrocities committed by this regime are not surprising, but the international community’s reaction is. Where is the outrage?! Since when is Iran a champion for women’s rights?
Please look at this again and think about the hypocrisy that is the UN.
That’s twisted. Would it be possible that they’re doing that to make Iran evolve in terms of women’s rights, for some sort of conscience awareness?
