Iran’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations has called for the ouster of Israel from the United Nations women’s rights body, citing the regime’s killing of thousands of Palestinian women in relentless strikes against the Gaza Strip.
“On International Women’s Day, empowering women and enhancing their rights require addressing injustices. Over 9,000 Palestinian women were killed by the Israeli regime amidst the UNCSW [UN Commission on the Status of Women] inaction,” the mission said in a post published on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, on Thursday evening.
“Stop the occupying Zionist regime from occupying UN seats,” it said, also using the hashtag “#RemoveIsraelfromUNCSW.”
The demand came as the world is marking International Women’s Day under the theme “Invest in Women: Accelerate Progress” on March 8.
The Health Ministry in Gaza announced in a Thursday statement, on the eve of International Women’s Day, that the Israeli military has killed nearly 9,000 Palestinian women in the course of its devastating onslaught on the enclave.
“The silence of the international community has contributed to the genocide of Palestinian women,” Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said. He added that “60,000 pregnant women in Gaza suffer from malnutrition, dehydration and a lack of proper health care.”
Qudra noted that Palestinian women, particularly in Gaza, are experiencing the worst humanitarian catastrophe “of killing, displacement, arrest, miscarriage, epidemics and death from hunger as a result of the Israeli aggression.”
He urged the United Nations to work for “an immediate halt of the Israeli aggression and genocide” and also called on “international women’s organizations to mobilize efforts to end the Israeli aggression” on Gaza.
Earlier, the Gaza Health Ministry said pregnant women in the Gaza Strip also lack proper health care.
It added that women make up 49% of the population of the Strip, most of them in childbearing age, with about 5,000 women giving birth monthly in harsh, unsafe and unhealthy conditions as a result of shelling and displacement.
At least 30,800 Palestinians, most of them women and children, have been confirmed killed and 72,043 others injured so far during Israel’s genocidal war, which began following Operation al-Aqsa Storm by Gaza-based resistance movements on October 7, 2023.
The Israeli military campaign has devastated large swathes of Gaza, destroyed hospitals and displaced a major proportion of the population of 2.4 million in the world’s “largest open-air prison.”
