Journalists and analysts continued on Thursday to unpack a report on Iran issued this week by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, in which the U.N. diplomat broadly emphasized that there had been no fundamental improvement in Iranian human rights under Rouhani, “despite pledges made by the president during his campaign and after his swearing in.”
Deutsche Welle reported on aspects of Ban’s report that dealt with the plight of Iranian women, extensively quoting the U.N. diplomat’s assessment that “women’s rights activists continue to face arrest and persecution” and that “[w]omen are subject to discrimination, entrenched both in law and in practice.” The report cited multiple examples of institutionalized discrimination: Iran’s penal code officially deems a woman’s life and her testimony in court to be worth half of a man’s, while the country’s civil code among other things allows girls as young as 13 to be married off.