International Women’s Day: Supporting Women’s Rights in Iran

March 7, 2008

For International Women’s Day 2008, six women Nobel Peace Laureates of the Nobel Women’s Initiative join more than 250 leading women’s right advocates and organizations from around the world in a strong show of international support for the Iranian women’s movement. In a statement released today by the newly launched International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, the group expressed their concern about the persecution and prosecution of their Iranian colleagues.

The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran was launched earlier this week to advocate for human rights and social movements in Iran, provide a platform for their views, and gather international support for all Iranian human rights defenders.

The Nobel Women’s Initiative endorses the below statement and supports the collective efforts of all human rights defenders in Iran.

On International Women’s Day,

We Stand In Support of Women’s Human Rights in Iran

Today, the international community’s attention is focused on Iran’s nuclear activities and a possible military confrontation between the United States and Iran. We strongly oppose any military action against Iran that would result in great loss of life and do irreparable harm to the human security of the Iranian people and destabilize this already volatile region for many years to come. At the same time, the Iranian government is exploiting the international community’s preoccupation with the nuclear crisis to further repress peaceful human rights and women’s rights activists. A most recent case in point is the closure of the Zanan magazine, the only remaining independent print medium in Iran focusing on women’s issues.

The Iranian women’s rights movement is facing unprecedented obstacles and threats. On the occasion of March 8, International Women’s Day, we express our solidarity with women in their quest for equal rights and an end to pervasive legal discrimination against women.

The government is preventing women from freely celebrating this important day of international solidarity. The effort to stop expressions of support for women’s rights is part of a general denial of basic social and economic rights in Iran. We call on the Iranian government to remove all restrictions on peaceful assembly and expression as required by the Iranian Constitution, in accordance with Iran’s obligations under international human rights treaties.

Iranian women’s rights activists have launched several peaceful campaigns for gender equality. Change for Equality, for example, is a grassroots campaign to collect one million signatures asking for Iranian laws to conform with international law requiring non-discrimination based on gender. The Iranian government continues to harshly persecute (and prosecute) the campaign’s activists. Dozens of women’s activists have been detained over the past two years and have court cases pending against them. Several have been sentenced to lengthy prison sentences. Security and intelligence forces routinely interrogate, harass, and intimidate campaign activists. We call on the Iranian government immediately to halt repressive actions against women’s rights activists and to work together with them to make Iran a place where women and men enjoy equal rights, and a country that upholds international human rights laws and standards.

On this occasion of the International Women’s Day, we, the undersigned, herewith express our solidarity with Iranian women and men committed to universal human rights–now, and in the future.