ID with Special Rapporteur on violence against women
Mrs Manjoo, Sudwind appreciates your endeavours during the last six years to prevent and to end violence against women. We also, share your concern on the lack of a UN dedicated monitoring instrument on violence against women and girls, with its own monitoring body. In the Islamic Republic of Iran we witness the denial of systematic violence against women – women are locked at home and this is justified as a form of cultural diversity . In the Islamic Republic of Iran We have witnessed the sentence of six months imprisonment for a father who killed his 17 year old daughter with a knife and eight months of jail for a husband who killed his wife with an axe and threw acid on her dead body, both of which justified as ‘honour killing’. Many more male killers are free from punishment and jail altogether. Such light sentences are by no means preventive of crimes committed against women and girls. Attacking women with acid and killing or disfiguring them for life is one of the worse cases of violence against women. Yet again, in October 2014, a chain of acid attacks targeted women in the city of Isfahan, where men on motorbike threw acid randomly at women and ran away. Although there was much outcry about this brutality, no arrest had been made and the eight known victims are still waiting for justice. Instead, a number of women activists who rallied against the attacks were detained and sent to prison. Violence against women in Iran is demonstrated by the detention of a young woman named Ghoncheh Ghavami last year who had stood with other women in front of a stadium to demonstrate against the ban on women attending sports games. She was released from prison after much international outcry. Mrs Manjoo, we understand that we have a long way to go to eliminate violence against women. But when a country like the Islamic Republic of Iran is appointed to the executive body of UN Women, it should be the first to take steps toward eradication of violence against women within its own borders. It should implement arrests and retribution of perpetrators to proportional sentences in accordance with international human rights standards.
