Iran’s Vice President for Women and Family Affairs Ensiyeh Khazali has called upon the United Nations to remove Israel from the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) over the occupying regime’s decades-old atrocities against Palestinian women and violations of their rights.
In her address to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women in New York on Monday, Khazali said Palestinian women are struggling for survival amid an ongoing and well-documented genocide in Gaza, noting that more than 22,000 women and children have lost their lives as a result, while nearly 3,000 others have become widowed.
She cited a UN Women report that two mothers are killed in the Gaza Strip every hour since hostilities began on October 7 last year, stating, “The free people of the world expect 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”.
The Iranian vice president also underlined the need for an immediate action to eliminate poverty and hunger of oppressed 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.
At least 31,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, have been confirmed killed and over 72,000 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 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 and the country has seen rapid progress in the years after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
“All Iranian pregnant women and and women with breastfeeding babies 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 provision of such services,” she said.
The Iranian official finally noted that gender justice in education has grown to hit 97% in the Islamic Republic, emphasizing that 60% of Iranian teachers and 40% of specialist doctors are females.
