A US draft resolution to exclude Iran from the UN Commission on the Status of Women will be put to a vote by the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) (CSW).
Tehran has come under pressure from Washington to pay a price for denying women’s rights and brutally repressing protests.
A draft resolution that similarly condemns Iran’s actions as “flagrantly antithetical to the human rights of women and girls and the mandate of the Commission on the Status of Women” was previously circulated by the US.
Iran has recently begun its four-year term on the 45-member Commission, which meets yearly in March and works to advance women’s empowerment and gender equality.
The draft resolution seeks to exclude Iran with “immediate effect” from the Commission on the Status of Women for the “remainder of its 2022-2026 term.”
The 54-member Council would vote on whether to oust Iran from the Commission.
Iran, 17 other states and the Palestinians argued in a letter to ECOSOC on Monday that a vote “will undoubtedly create an unwelcome precedent that will ultimately prevent other Member States with different cultures, customs and traditions … from contributing to the activities of such Commissions.”
The letter urged members to vote against the U.S. move to avoid a “new trend for expelling sovereign and rightfully-elected States from any given body of the international system if ever perceived as inconvenient and a circumstantial majority could be secured for imposing such maneuvers.”
Only five of the signatories to the letter are currently ECOSOC members and able to vote on Wednesday.
The Islamic Republic on Monday hanged a man in public who state media said had been convicted of killing two members of the security forces, the second execution in less than a week of people involved in protests against Iran’s ruling theocracy.
Nationwide unrest erupted three months ago after the death while in detention of 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman Mahsa Amini, who was arrested by morality police enforcing the Islamic Republic’s mandatory dress code laws.
The demonstrations have turned into a popular revolt by furious Iranians from all layers of society, posing one of the most significant legitimacy challenges to the Shi’ite clerical elite since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Iran has attributed the turmoil to its foreign adversaries and their agents.
To the delight of activists, the Geneva-based U.N. Rights Council approved a resolution last month to designate an impartial investigation into Iran’s lethal crackdown on protesters.
Tehran claims that Western nations have been exploiting the council in a “appalling and humiliating” manner to criticize Iran.
