Iran hosts meeting to discuss UN support for female terror victims

The Iranian capital, Tehran, has hosted a specialized meeting dedicated to examining the United Nations (UN)’s performance in providing support for female victims of terrorism.

The meeting took place on Sunday on the occasion of the upcoming International Women’s Day, which is to be marked across the world next Tuesday, with several notable Iranian academicians and researchers in attendance.

It was a response to a call for such a session by the Tehran-based Association for Defending Victims of Terrorism (ADVT) and was held in cooperation with the association the United Nations Information Centre (UNIC) in Tehran, and the research center at the Allameh Tabataba’i University (ATU)’s Faculty of Law and Political Sciences.

At the start of the meeting, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s message on the International Women’s Day was read out. In it, he called for solid funding, courageous advocacy, and unbending political will to achieve gender equality around the world.

“Terror is the worst type and the dirtiest way of fighting,” Dr. Azam Ahangar, a sociology researcher at the University of Tehran, told the meeting. “In fact, when the enemy has drawn a blank and cannot do anything and is in a position of weakness, it adopts a strategy that is called terror.”

Addressing the attendees, Dr. Aramesh Shahbazi, a member of the ATU’s Faculty of Law and Political Sciences, said, “The United Nations appears to have come to the conclusion, over the recent years at least, that a reactive measure is not enough a means to an end, and that measures have to include a preemptive aspect as well as the [simple] reaction and expression of regret over killings of women.”