After the United States diplomatic delegation organized member nations, a United Nations group kicked Iran off a commission responsible for reporting on the status of women around the world, Reuters reports.
Citing Iran’s recent passage of more laws restricting women’s rights and its crackdown on women’s rights demonstrations following the death of a 22-year-old Kurdish woman imprisoned by Morality Police for showing too much hair, the US drafted and circulated a petition to remove Iran from the Commission on the Status of Women, a project of the 54-member UN Economic and Social Council, and received votes in favor of the resolution from 28 nations. Eight members including China and Russia voted against, with the other nations abstaining.
“It’s hugely important for the women of Iran,” American UN Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield told Reuters after the vote. “They got a strong message from the United Nations that we will support them and we will condemn Iran and we will not let them sit on the Commission for the Status of Women and continue to attack women in their own country,”