Freeland, Joly sign open letter decrying Iran’s violation of women’s rights

The letter condemns Iran's violent crackdown on recent protests and calls for the country to be removed from the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women.

Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland and Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly are among the key signatories to an open letter decrying Iran’s record on women’s rights.

The letter, published in Sunday’s New York Times, condemns Iran’s violent crackdown on recent protests and calls for the country to be removed from the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women.

Former prime minister Kim Campbell and human rights activist and author Nazanin Afshin-Jam are the other Canadians on a list of “key signatures” to the letter.

Iran began a four-year term on the UN’s status-of-women commission earlier this year.

The letter says Iran should have been disqualified for its long-standing, systemic oppression of women, as well as its recent brutality towards human-rights protesters.

Six weeks of protests in Iran were sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who was arrested for allegedly failing to properly cover her hair and died in police custody.

For every day that Iran remains a member of the UN commission, the letter says, the body loses credibility.

The other member states of the commission have a duty to “uphold its mandate and defend the very values they claim to support,” it says.