United Nations: Conservative Muslim and Roman Catholic countries and liberal Western nations approved a UN blueprint to combat violence against women and girls, ignoring strong objections from Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood that it clashed with Islamic principles and sought to destroy the family.
After two weeks of tough and often contentious negotiations, 131 countries joined consensus last night on a compromise 17-page document that Michelle Bachelet, the head of the UN women’s agency, called historic because it sets global standards for action to prevent and end “one of the gravest violations of human rights in the world, the violence that is committed against women and girls.”
At the start of the meeting, Bachelet said data from the World Health Organization and other research shows that an average of 40 per cent, and up to 70 per cent of women in some countries, face violence in their lifetimes, and she pointed to recent high-profile attacks on women in India and Pakistan.
She said on Saturday that during the two-week session “countless women and girls around the world have suffered violence.” “People worldwide expected action, and we didn’t fail them,” she said to loud applause.
“Yes, we did it!” On Wednesday, the Brotherhood, which has emerged as the most powerful political faction in Egypt since the 2011 uprising, lashed out at the anticipated document for advocating sexual freedoms for women and the right to abortion “under the guise of sexual and reproductive rights.”
It called the title, on eliminating and preventing all forms of violence against women and girls, “deceitful.”
Last week, Egypt proposed an amendment to the text saying that each country is sovereign and can implement the document in accordance with its own laws and customs, a provision strongly opposed by many countries in Europe, Latin America and Asia.
It was dropped in the final compromise drafted by the meeting’s chair.
Instead, the final text urges all countries “to strongly condemn all forms of violence against women and girls and to refrain from invoking any custom, tradition and religious consideration to avoid their obligations with respect to its elimination.” (AP)
