Iran urges Israel’s ouster from UN women’s group over rights violations
Iranian Vice President for Women and Family Affairs Ensiyeh Khazali called on the United Nations to remove Israel from its Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) over the regime’s decades-old atrocities against Palestinian women and violations of their rights.
“The free people of the world expect that the regime responsible for decades of displacement, rape and murder of millions of [Palestinian] women and children, not to have a seat in the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women,” Khazali said in her address to the CSW in New York on Monday, according to Press TV.
She said Palestinian women were struggling for survival amid an ongoing and “well-documented genocide” in the Gaza Strip, noting that more than 22,000 women and children had lost their lives as a result, while nearly 3,000 others had become widowed.
She cited a CSW report that two mothers were being killed in the Palestinian enclave every hour since hostilities began on October 7 last year.
The Iranian vice president also underlined the need for immediate action to eliminate the poverty and hunger of Palestinian women.
While the women’s loyalty to the resistance front is endless, their trust in the international community is rapidly fading away, Khazali pointed out.
More than 31,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, have been killed, and over 72,000 others injured so far during Israel’s war, which began following Operation Al-Aqsa Storm by the Gaza-based resistance movement Hamas on October 7, 2023.
The Israeli military campaign has devastated large swathes of Gaza, destroyed hospitals and displaced half of the population of 2.4 million in the world’s “largest open-air prison.” Israel has also imposed a “complete siege” on the coastal sliver, cutting off fuel, electricity, food and water to the Palestinians living there.
Elsewhere in her speech, Khazali highlighted that Iranian women, irrespective of cruel and unilateral sanctions, have managed to take great strides in removal of deprivation, while the country has seen rapid progress in the years after the 1979 Islamic
Revolution.
“All Iranian pregnant women and women with infants as well as children under the age of 7 enjoy free health insurance. This service is not only offered to Iranian women but is also abundantly available for refugees, in a way that our universities of medical sciences stand first as regards the provision of such services,” she said.
The Iranian official also noted that gender equality in education has grown to 97% in the Islamic Republic, emphasizing that 60% of Iranian teachers, and 40% of medical specialists are female.