Stone women to death, get appointed to UN women's rights body

National Post

Full Comment’s Araminta Wordsworth brings you a regular dose of international punditry at its finest. At first glance, the headline looks like a joke — “Iran wins a seat on UN Commission on the Status of Women.”

But this is no laughing matter. The country that sees women as second-class citizens and stones adulteresses to death has won a place by default on the world body’s commission charged with improving the lot of women around the world.

Worse still, it acquired — I refuse to use the word “won” — the place by default, thanks to the UN’s bloc voting procedure. It’s the second time the mullahs have used manipulation of the rules to land a place on the commission.

As a U.S. official told Fox News, “there is no opportunity [to object]. That is not how the procedure works.”

Read more: http://network.nationalpost.com/NP/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2010/05/03/no-it-s-not-a-joke-iran-elected-to-un-women-s-rights-body.aspx#ixzz0n42mpQFA

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NCRI

Tehran regime's membership in UN women’s commission is a dagger to the heart of freedom-seeking women and counter to the commission's goals

"Membership of Iran's misogynous regime to the UN commission is a bitter irony and a dagger to the hearts of all freedom-seeking women and equality advocates across the world," Ms. Chitsaz said. She added, "In the past three decades, this regime has executed and brutally tortured thousands of women political prisoners. It has stoned many women to death on bogus charges and arrested, persecuted and harassed thousands of women for improper veiling. In the meantime, the regime has been condemned 56 times by various UN bodies for its violations of human rights."

Membership of a regime that has even rejected the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) makes a mockery of all conventions and human rights achievements

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The Vancouver Sun
Canada ‘deplores’ Iran’s appointment to UN women’s rights panel


Canadian officials are outraged that Iran has been elected to a United Nations panel on women’s rights.

Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon said he was “extremely troubled” about the Middle East nation’s human-rights record.

Last week, Iran was elected to the Commission on the Status of Women, part of the UN’s economic and social council.

Cannon said in a news release that he has “serious concerns” about Iran’s participation in the panel, which is “dedicated exclusively to gender equality and advancement of women.”

“We deplore this development but will use Iran’s membership on this body to take the Iranian authorities to task for their systemic human-rights violations,” said Cannon.


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The Corner
Iran vs. Women

The news that Iran has been elected to the U.N. women’s-rights commission should really be ho-hum. After all, such states as Cuba, Zimbabwe, China, Saudi Arabia, and genocidal Sudan have sat on the human-rights commission. That is what the U.N. is for: the Kafkaesque. But the news about Iran is slightly hard for me to take just at the moment. I have been at the Oslo Freedom Forum, listening to, among others, Marina Nemat. She is one of the countless girls and women who have been seized by the regime, thrown into Evin Prison — one of the darkest places on earth — tortured, raped, and otherwise battered. The regime has been doing this right from the beginning. Right from about 1980. And it is going on now. Rape, in particular, has been a constant tool of the regime: a tool of punishment and control. Why do we know Marina Nemat’s name, of all the girls and women who have been through this? Once escaped to the West, she wrote a book, Prisoner of Tehran: One Woman’s Story of Survival Inside an Iranian Prison. It is a harrowing, mind-scrambling story.


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Sky

The New UN Human Rights Joke. The One About Women...

United Nations staff, aware that the joke about electing Libya to chair the Human Rights Council a few years back has become bit stale, have come up with a new one.


This one starts, 'Have you heard the one about Iran’s election to the UN Women Rights Council?’


Iran, having lost the battle for a place on the Human Rights Council, managed instead this week to get onto the 'Commission on the Status of Women'(CSW ) a body dedicated ‘exclusively to promote gender equality and advancement of women'.


Iran was 'elected' by acclaim, meaning no-one voted, but no-one opposed membership in a classic UN stitch up by the Asian bloc. A campaign by women's rights champions inside and outside Iran calling on the UN not to take this step fell on deaf ears.



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