The United Nations took a regrettable step on women's rights last week. The Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) picked the Tehran government to sit on its women's rights committee. While there are several countries that truly should not be on this committee, Iran is near or at the top. In the same week that the UNHRC felt Iran should represent women's and children's rights, the UN Special Rapporteur on Iran said that the country was in the midst of a crackdown that, in particular, sentences children to death.
The Tehran government, as of today, has 85 children on death row in its prison system. It gets worse. Last year, Iran executed six children between 14 and 17. It was not a unique event in the country's justice system. In 2016, Iran executed five children. In 2015, seven died by hanging including public hanging from a construction crane. In 2014, there were 13, and so on.
It is worth noting this about the Tehran government: Boys can be executed when they reach 15. Girls need only be nine. Javaid Rehman, a British-Pakistani legal scholar, had much more in the UN Special Rapporteur's book published last week. The country is involved in a multi-year crackdown on dissent and death penalties. Women and girls are common targets, perhaps the majority.
Iran says it is cracking down on dissent -- a nasty way of stating that increasing numbers of those slated for hangman are human rights defenders, lawyers, journalists, and labour activists. Most fair people inside and outside Iran believe the increasingly violent campaign is a simple violation of human rights. In a sickening example, the civil rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh has just drawn 34 years in prison -- for opposing the mullahs' rules that require women to wear the hijab.
This gross attack on Iranian women is, unfortunately, just one example. One of the worst campaigns against women in the Middle East is sponsored by Apple and Google. If you want to own a woman in Saudi Arabia -- and millions do -- just log onto iTunes or the Google Play Store. Absher is free for your phone, completely backed by Apple and Google, and keeps track of your women from 6 to 60, or more. To rub it in even more, Absher is actually listed as a "productivity" app for both iPhone and Android phones. It's free, of course.
Here's how the app works. A man registers the app with the Saudi Ministry of Interior. Then, he lists all the women around him -- wives, female children, female parents and so on -- by national ID card, passport and whatever other identification she carries. There's no real age limit. If a woman marries, then the "owner" of the young woman should pass the details along to the next man, her husband, say.
Then, women and under-age boys certainly cannot leave the country without the man's permission. If she gets a parking fine, details are sent directly to her male controller. Not only can a man control whether a woman is allowed to leave the country, but he can also decide for how many days.
Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google might restrict the app. Or they might not, since it's only for Saudi Arabia. There is no excuse for tech companies carrying such a dreadful app, and they must stop immediately.