Female MPs to Present Iran's Position in the 57th session of the UN Commission on Violence against Women in New York.

Female MPs to Present Iran's Position in the 57th session of the UN Commission on Violence against Women in New York. (Fars).

"Ending violence against women is a matter of life and death," Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson told the opening of the two-week session of the Commission on the Status of Women in New York on Monday, the UN News Center reported on Tuesday.

"The problem pervades all countries, even in the most stable and developed regions," Eliasson added.

Eliasson stressed that it will take multiple approaches to tackle this issue, from governments implementing policies to empower victims and prosecute perpetrators, to creating a culture where gender stereotypes are broken by encouraging men and boys to take an equal share of responsibilities in their home and families.

"Violence against women pervades war zones as well as stable communities, capitals as well as the countryside, public space as well as the private sphere," Eliasson said. "Since it is an unacceptable feature of daily life, we have to respond everywhere and on every level."

According to the UN Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women), up to 70 percent of women in some countries face physical and/or sexual violence in their lifetime. In countries such as Australia, Canada, Israel (the Zionist regime), South Africa and the United States, intimate partner violence accounts for 40 to 70 percent of female murder victims.* In addition, some 140 million girls have suffered female genital mutilation and millions more are subjected to forced marriage and trafficking.

Eliasson underlined that eliminating violence against women and girls is also an issue intricately linked to development and peace. It is critical to achieve the anti-poverty targets known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), he said, as access to sanitation, is essential to guarantee women have safe places to seek privacy. This is not possible when there are currently more than one billion people without access to toilets.

The Women's Fraction of the Iranian Parliament dispatched two female MPs to the UN Commission of the Status of Women (UNCSW).The Iranian parliamentarian delegation includes members of Iranian Parliament Sakineh Omrani and Nayyereh Akhavan who left for New York to attend the 57th session of UNCSW meeting at the UN headquarters.

"In this summit, the representatives of the Islamic Republic will state Iran's stance on legislative and executive bids to reduce and prevent violence against women," Omrani said.

The Iranian lawmaker added that CDs and catalogues containing the views of the Islamic Republic with regards to women's status would be distributed among the participants of the conference.In mid 2010, The United Nations elected Iran to its Commission on the Status of Women, handing a four-year seat on the influential human rights body to Tehran.In the four-year period beginning in 2011, Iran will help set UN policy on gender equality and the advancement of women.Other countries joining Iran for the term include Belgium, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Estonia, Georgia, Jamaica, Liberia, the Netherlands, Spain, Thailand and Zimbabwe. Read the full story here.

Related: Qaradawi Organization Wants To Be Consulted Before Islamic Countries Sign Int. Treaties about "Violence against Women" as it might 'contradict' Sharia Law.

* Hmmmm.....Nice to see that the Iranians news forgot to mention Turkey , Saudi Arabia , Pakistan , Afghanistan and i could just go on, but lets just look at their BFF Turkey:
The US Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2010 says violence against women, including domestic violence, is a "serious" problem in both urban and rural areas of Turkey.

In a May 2011 report on family violence in Turkey, Human Rights Watch cites a 2009 survey by the Turkish Hacettepe University that showed that 42 percent of women in Turkey, between the ages of 15 and 60, and 47 percent of women in rural areas, had "experienced physical and/or sexual violence by their husbands or partners at some point in their lives" (May 2011, 10). Similarly, an article in Today's Zaman says that "[m]ore than 40 percent of women in Turkey have suffered from violence at some point in their lives" (19 Feb. 2012). In addition, Roj Women's Association (Roj Women), a London-based "Kurdish and Turkish grass-roots women’s rights movement" (n.d.), notes that, in southeast Turkey, one out of two women are victims of violence; nationally, it is 39 percent (Mar. 2011, 5).

In a March 2012 report, the parliamentary Human Rights Commission noted that, since 2008, domestic violence, as well as violence against women, in Turkey had "doubled" Today's Zaman 13 Mar. 2012). The report includes statistics from the police and the gendarmerie on the incidence of domestic abuse and violence against women: 48,264 cases in 2008, 62,587 in 2009, 72,257 in 2010, and 80,398 in 2011 (ibid.). Hurriyet Daily News reports similarly that, between 2008 and 2011, the number of cases of domestic violence recorded by law enforcement agencies increased by almost 70 percent, from 48,000 to 80,000 (5 May 2012). Bianet, a multi-media Turkish information site, reported that a study by the General Police Directorate revealed that, between February 2010 and August 2011, there were 78,488 registered incidents of domestic violence in Turkey (10 Nov. 2011).

The parliamentary Human Rights Commission report described the province of Istanbul as the "most dangerous" for women with respect to domestic and gender-based violence; in 2011, the province totalled 10,207 cases of violence against women (Today's Zaman 13 Mar. 2012). Police records, reports Today's Zaman, show that, between 2009 and February 2012, there were 2,754 incidents of "'domestic assault'" in the city of Istanbul (19 Feb. 2012).

The parliamentary Human Rights Commission also noted an apparent decrease in violence against women in some Anatolian provinces, known for high levels of gender-based violence, forced marriage, and honor killings (ibid.13 Mar. 2012). For example, incidents in Batman decreased from 163 in 2008 to 51 in 2011 and incidents in Diyarbakir decreased from 581 in 2008 to 279 in 2011 ibid.).

The EC progress report noted that, according to official statistics on violence against women, in 2008, 806 women were killed, and, in the first 7 months of 2009, there were 953 (EU 12 Oct. 2011, 32 note 37). Bianet reports that, based on data collected from national and local media, between January and October 2011, 226 women were killed by men and 93 were raped; most of the cases occurred in the Marmara region (northwestern Turkey) and the Aegean (west coast) (16 Dec. 2011). In the month of October of 2011, 20 women were killed by men, most of them by their husbands, in 16 Turkish provinces (bianet 16 Dec. 2011). Out of those, 12 were stabbed to death, 7 shot, 1 killed after she had left a shelter, and 4 after submitting a request for protection or a complaint to the office of the prosecutor (ibid.).

According to bianet, the media reported 22 cases of violence resulting in injury against women by men, the majority of them either a husband or a boyfriend, in the month of October, most of them occurring in Izmir (ibid.). The incidents were as follows: 13 women were beaten; 7 injured with a knife; 1 with a rifle; 1 fell from a fifth floor balcony while trying to escape her husband; and 1 was wounded by a husband who ignored a restraining order (ibid.).

Human Rights Watch notes that, according to a study by the Turkish Hacettepe University, only eight percent of women victims of sexual or physical violence turn for help to institutions, NGOs, or elsewhere (May 2011, 10).Source: UNHRC.

Iran Fashion Police.