Calls To Oust Iran From UN Women's Commission Getting Stronger
Calls for expulsion of the Islamic Republic from the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) are getting stronger with the US and the Netherlands joining the chorus.
Calls for expulsion of the Islamic Republic from the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) are getting stronger with the US and the Netherlands joining the chorus.
US Vice President Kamala Harris said on Wednesday that Washington will try to remove Iran from the 45-member CSW over the government's denial of women's rights and brutal crackdown on protests.
The Islamic Republic is just starting a four-year term on the commission, which meets annually every March and aims to promote gender equality and the empowerment of women.
"The United States believes that no nation that systematically abuses the rights of women and girls should play a role in any international or United Nations body charged with protecting these very same rights," Harris said in a statement.
"Iran has demonstrated through its denial of women's rights and brutal crackdown on its own people that it is unfit to serve on this Commission," Harris said.
On Tuesday, the Dutch Senate adopted a motion calling on its government to “support any proposal” to remove the Iranian regime from the UN Women’s Rights Commission.
UN Watch, an independent non-governmental human rights group based in Geneva, has drafted a resolution for the 54-nation UN Economic Social Council (ECOSOC) to remove Iran.
A group of women leaders in business, politics, and the arts from over 14 countries has called for the immediate expulsion of the Islamic Republic from the UN Commission.
In an open letter, published in The New York Times on Sunday, October 29, the preeminent leaders expressed their solidarity with Iranian women and girls, as well as men, who are holding daily protests for more than 40 days across the country and abroad following the death in custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Jina Amini.
While the lawyer has previously supported at least some sanctions against Tehran, Ebadi’s intervention comes not only after six weeks of protests in Iran but with the US in recent weeks showing hesitancy toward talks aimed at reviving the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action). Under a restored JCPOA, Iran would gain access to funds frozen abroad and lifting of US sanctions in return for curbing its nuclear program.
Ebadi was addressing an ‘Arria’ meeting of the United Nations Security Council, an informal gathering sponsored by members of the council or other states to allow informative input from experts or non-state groups. The meeting was sponsored and introduced by US ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield and Albanian ambassador Ferit Hoxha to discuss weeks of protests in Iran following the September 16 death of Mahsa Amini after arrest by Tehran ‘morality police.’
Speaking virtually from London, Ebadi said the “demands for justice” by the Amini family had “so far yielded no results.” Ebadi called on “western governments and especially the United States of America to refrain from subscribing [to] any type of agreements that will help the survival of the regime, as the Islamic Republic does not spend the funds for the welfare of the people but on the contrary provides and buys more weapons, which in turn cause more killing in Iran and the region.”
Ebadi, who left Iran in 2009, said the UN should set up an investigation into “recent repressions in Iran,” citing the 2017 precedent of Myanmar, and demanded the withdrawal of ambassadors of the “governments of the free world” from Iran with their representation reduced to charge d’affaires. She called for the removal of Iran from the UN Commission on the Status of Women, and for the establishment of a “democratic and secular government.”
Also addressing the Arria meeting virtually, the US Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Iran Javaid Rehman highlighted an “absence of accountability” in Iran, arguing that official investigations into Amini’s death had “failed to meet the minimum [standards] required.”Rehman argued Iranian family law, the age of criminal responsibility, and employment practices were all discriminatory, creating a situation of “gender apartheid.”
‘Powder-keg moment’
Rehman called for an international “independent investigative mechanism” to investigate the state’s response to six weeks of protests, in which he said at least 277 people had been killed, including 67 in Sistan-Baluchestan province.
The third speaker, Iran-born Hollywood actress Nazanin Boniadi, who was present in New York, called Amini’s death a “murder” that had been “the powder-keg moment that ignited this most recent uprising.” She said that the slogan ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ was a “declaration of opposition to a regime…built on being anti-women, pro-martyrdom, and repressive.”
Boniadi disputed the “myth…perpetuated by global pundits…that compulsory hejab is a cultural issue that we shouldn’t interfere with.” She also rejected “another myth, that this regime is reformable,” and argued that presidential and other elections could not “make a difference.” She said that “the potential for the current protests to transform Iran from theocracy to representative government could be a geopolitical game-changer, and the single most important key to bringing about stability in the Middle East.”
US ambassador Thomas-Greenfield, sitting in front of White House Special Envoy Rob Malley, said the US would support an international investigation into human rights in Iran, and had already sanctioned Iran’s ‘morality police.’ Arria meetings, first established in 1992 by Venezuelan Ambassador Diego Arria, have sometimes led to UN Security Council resolutions.
