UN Women’s Commission to vote on Iran’s membership
The United Nations body, UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), is set to vote on a US draft resolution to oust Iran from the UN’s Commission on the Status of Women (CSW).
Washington has pressed to punish Tehran for its denial of women’s rights and brutal suppression of protests.
The US had earlier circulated a draft resolution that also denounces Iran’s policies as “flagrantly contrary to the human rights of women and girls and the mandate of the Commission on the Status of Women.”
Iran has just started a four-year term on the 45-member Commission, which meets annually every March and aims to promote gender equality and women’s empowerment.
The draft resolution seeks to exclude Iran with “immediate effect” from the Commission on the Status of Women for the “remainder of its 2022-2026 term.”
The 54-member Council would vote on whether to oust Iran from the Commission.
Iran, 17 other states and the Palestinians argued in a letter to ECOSOC on Monday that a vote “will undoubtedly create an unwelcome precedent that will ultimately prevent other Member States with different cultures, customs and traditions … from contributing to the activities of such Commissions.”
The letter urged members to vote against the U.S. move to avoid a “new trend for expelling sovereign and rightfully-elected States from any given body of the international system if ever perceived as inconvenient and a circumstantial majority could be secured for imposing such manoeuvres.”
Only five of the signatories to the letter are currently ECOSOC members and able to vote on Wednesday.
The Islamic Republic on Monday hanged a man in public who state media said had been convicted of killing two members of the security forces, the second execution in less than a week of people involved in protests against Iran’s ruling theocracy.
Also Read: Iran protests: Tehran rejects U.N. investigation into crackdown
Nationwide unrest erupted three months ago after the death while in detention of 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman Mahsa Amini, who was arrested by morality police enforcing the Islamic Republic’s mandatory dress code laws.
The demonstrations have turned into a popular revolt by furious Iranians from all layers of society, posing one of the most significant legitimacy challenges to the Shi’ite clerical elite since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Iran has blamed its foreign enemies and their agents for the unrest.
The Geneva-based U.N. Rights Council voted last month to appoint an independent investigation into Iran’s deadly repression of protests, passing the motion to the cheers of activists.
Tehran accuses Western states of using the council to target Iran in an “appalling and disgraceful” move.
Reuters /Zainab Sa’id
