March 10, 2014 - To mark International Women’s Day, Hivos partner Justice for Iran (JFI)
has published a major report on history and politics of enforced hijab under
the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Thirty-five Years of Forced Hijab: The Widespread and Systematic
Violation of Women’s Rights in Iran points out that over the past ten
years, more than 30,000 women have faced arrest throughout Iran due to hijab
laws. Without a clear definition of hijab, Islamic Republic laws consider women
who lack “Islamic veil” in “public” as criminal and punishable by imprisonment
and fines.
Although Islamic Sharia laws deem hijab compulsory at age 9, Islamic
Republic requires all girls to begin observing hijab laws at the outset of
primary education at age 7. It also imposes hijab laws on women of all faiths
and is used as a tool for segregation and imposition of a wide range of
limitations on women.
These limitations, as documented in the JFI report, have deprived many women
for 35 years of education, employment, driving, travelling by air, access to
public medical services as well as cultural and recreational facilities because
of their hijab, including instances involving arrest and other violations of
the articles of the Convention on the Rights of the Child through impositions
of hijab rules on girl children.
The report details how a high number of women also face detention and
various forms of torture, including lashing, describing the process of arrest
and prosecution of women based on the charge of improper Islamic hijab and
unjust sentences.
However, it also highlights an important historical fact that despite 35
years of violent enforcement measures, Iranian women continue to resist hijab
laws and through their daily struggles provide an example for women in other
Muslim majority countries, in particular those in transition, to demand their
rights and freedom.
Furthermore, despite many promises, there has been no tangible improvement
since Mr. Rowhani took office.
“Thirty-five Years of Hijab” offers a number of recommendations and
highlights the need for the international community to shine a spotlight on
forced hijab as a symbol and means of imposing serious and systematic human
rights violation on more than half of Iran’s population.
A Hivos partner since 2010, Justice for Iran is one of the few Iranian
organisations that tackle sexual violence against women by the Iranian
authorities head on. Specifically, it was established to eradicate the impunity
and systematic practice by Iranian state officials of sexually abusing detained
women to extract confessions. The organisation raises public awareness, demands
accountability for women's rights violations committed by the Iranian
government and actively seeks to hold perpetrators accountable for their
crimes.
Hivos supports JFI because its overall mission and objective is to
strengthen, promote and defend women's rights in the increasingly
discriminatory and fundamentalist environment in Iran.
