Iran Press /Iran News: Recently the European Parliament issued a resolution over human rights and what it called violation against human rights in Iran and especially on women’s situations in Iranian society.
"My first reaction would be to invite members of the European parliament to come to Iran and witness by themselves because sometimes the news and propaganda about Iran are so biased and it doesn't give a real picture about the reality of Iran to the viewers and to those who are listening," Ebtekar stated in an exclusive interview with Iran Press.
The Vice President added, "Sometimes the reporting is biased and this is, unfortunately, going on after the Islamic revolution against the Muslim women and also against Iranian women there is a lot of propaganda."
"We in the Islamic Republic of Iran, like any other country, have our challenges", the high ranking official highlighted.
"It is not a utopian society and we also have had remarkable advances in different areas such as education, health, employment, sports, and this remarkable advancement not only has been due to favourable grounds that the government and the parliament (Majlis) have created for women but also the tireless efforts of women themselves to improve their status," she added.
Ebtekar went on to say: "Statistics show that in almost every area Iranian women have made advances and their status has improved and almost in any respect that you consider we see an advancement and improvement in women's conditions in the Islamic Republic."
Elsewhere she said, "This doesn’t mean that we don’t have problems or challenges. Like any other country, we have problems but we are moving forward to address these issues, for example, we are working both in cultural and social dimensions in terms of improving the legal status of women, marital status of women."
"... We are working with particularly in different provinces. We now have a plan for the advancement of women and families, practically in 31 provinces now this plan has been finalized, and in 14 provinces in the planning committee of that provinces, the plan has been adopted. So we have a plan for gender equality and this gender equality includes 8 different areas of indicators."
Vice President for Women and Family Affairs in another part of her remarks said, "This means we will move to improve the status of Iranian women and status of family and it also means that there is a social mobilization effort because part of these indicators deals with social mobilization and the role of civil society."
Referring to child issues in Iran, Ebtekar remarked, "We have few cases of violence against children and when it has been reported we witnessed a strong reaction from the judiciary system. We currently have a bill on the protection of the rights of the child and the juvenile. This bill is being finalised in the parliament now and we look forward to the final approval of that bill in parliament. A lot of work has been done."
She invited EU parliamentarians to come to Iran again and underscored "We are ready to engage in dialogue and talk and ready to present our achievements and our policies and I also think it is very important for them to understand the rights in an Islamic framework. It is important as sometimes misunderstandings arise because they don’t understand the basic principles and basic framework of Islamic laws." 101/211/216
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