Last week, the United Nations’ Economic and Social Council elected Iran to its Commission on the Status of Women. The commission defines itself as “the principal global inter-governmental body exclusively dedicated to the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of women.” Beginning next year, for four years, this entity will include one of the world’s most brutal violators of women’s rights.
The commission will have in its ranks a country where the testimony of a woman in a criminal trial is valued as half that of a man’s, and “the monetary compensation awarded to a female victim’s family upon her death is half that owed to the family of a male victim,” said Freedom House, noting that in Iran “women do not receive equal treatment under the law and face widespread discrimination in practice.” While the United Nations Children’s Fund has declared “marriage before the age of 18 is a fundamental violation of human rights,” the council has voted to include on the commission representatives of a government that has reduced the marriage age from 18 to 13, and younger with a judge’s approval.
Human Rights Watch reported last year, “According to official statistics, between March 2017 and March 2018, the state registered 217 marriages of girls under age 10, 35,000 marriages of girls between 10 and 14.” What makes this UN farce utterly tragic is its implications for feminist activists inside Iran. Courageous women who have risen up against these discriminatory laws and have subsequently been arrested and imprisoned cannot but feel forsaken by the international community.
If female drivers appear without headscarves in their own cars, traffic cameras will record the incident, tickets will be issued, and their vehicles impounded. If women riding Snapp, Iran’s equivalent of Uber, are found without their head-scarves, the drivers will be ticketed.
Most recently, if the same happens at a restaurant, the owner will be issued a fine. Thus, the regime is now systematically tying the women’s civil disobedience to the economic interests of ordinary people, turning citizen against citizen.
In lending legitimacy to a misogynist regime, sympathetic regimes in the United Nations do not shoulder all the blame. Western democracies have also played a part. To begin with, the UN council’s secret-ballot vote—43 out of 54 members—had to include at least four votes in favor of Iran from among the 15 European Union and Western Group democracies, which include Australia, Austria, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
European leaders in particular have long tended to play down Iran’s violations of women’s rights. They may proclaim themselves feminists at home, but when visiting Iran, they readily don the hijab, as if the most blatant symbol of gender inequality were just a breezy fashion statement. Thus is the historic struggle of Iranian women to gain the right to determine their own dress code reduced to a minor cultural squabble, and the hi-jab to far less than the symbol of oppression that it is for those upon whom it is imposed by law.
The United States, too, through its increasing disengagement from the United Nations during the previous administration, bears some responsibility for Iran’s membership in the commission. Iran’s former minister of women’s affairs Mahnaz Afkhami, commenting on the UN council’s vote, told me, “The U.S.’ attitude and lack of support for the United Nations has weakened the reach of the institution to the degree that it makes the occurrence of such outrageous decisions easier.” For years, friction between the west and Iran over nuclear matters has never tripped over into war. That is a blessing. But as Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice.” Iranian women will no doubt continue their fight for justice, but the United Nations has dealt a great blow to the valiant women engaged in that battle.
—––––– –––––—
Roya Hakakian is co-founder of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center.