A/HRC/25/26 Centre and propaganda against the system. Stressing the important role human rights defenders and lawyers could make in improving human rights protection and promotion in the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Secretary-General urges the Government to release human rights lawyers and human rights defenders and allow them to exercise their activities without risk to their physical and psychological integrity or any other form of restriction, harassment and intimidation. 6. Women’s political participation 21. The Secretary-General welcomes the Government’s efforts to appoint women to senior level government positions, including as Deputy President, head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Deputy President for Legal Affairs, head of the National Standards Organization, and spokeswoman for the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. The Secretary-General also welcomes the Government’s pledges to increase the number of women serving as ambassadors.26 However, no woman has been named to the Cabinet, thereby continuing women’s underrepresentation at the highest decision-making levels. The World Economic Forum, in The Global Gender Gap Report 2013, ranked the Islamic Republic of Iran at 130 out of 136 countries, three places down from the previous year.27 According to the report, the Islamic Republic of Iran has the lowest female representation in the labour forces and the lowest estimated female income in the region. The SecretaryGeneral encourages the Government to adopt laws and policies that promote the participation of women in public, political, economic and professional life. 22. Laws that permit gender discrimination and promote violence against women continue to be introduced in the Islamic Republic of Iran. The revised Islamic Penal Code, which came into force in June 2013, retains provisions that are discriminatory towards women. For instance, it values women’s testimony in a court of law as half that of a man’s, and a woman’s life half that of a man’s. The Civil Code of the Islamic Republic of Iran provides for the marriage of girls at age 13.28 However, with the permission of a competent court, girls can be married at the age of nine.29 The 2013 Family Protection Law reportedly allows for full or temporary marriage and legalizes polygamy.30 The Unsupervised or IllSupervised Children and Youth Protection Bill, which was adopted by Parliament in September 2013 and came into force on 23 October 2013, allows marriage between a child and legal guardian31 when a child has reached maturity, and marriage with the guardian is in the child’s best interest. This would mean that a girl as young as nine can be married to her guardian, which is a threat to her physical and mental integrity and runs counter to fundamental human rights guarantees stipulated in the Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which the Islamic Republic of Iran is a State party. This may also contribute to forced and early marriages, a phenomenon that the Islamic Republic of Iran is currently seeking to eradicate. In May 2013 the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights urged the Government to take measures to prevent forced, early and temporary marriage of girls, to ensure women’s right to employment and to remove all restrictions on women’s equal access to all aspects of university education. 26 27 28 29 30 31 Report submitted by a Tehran-based non-governmental organization, Organization for Defending Victims of Violence (ODVV). See also official news, PressTV, 29 August 2013, available at http://www.presstv.com/detail/2013/08/29/321129/iran-names-first-fm-spokeswoman/; and at http://archive.radiozamaneh.com/english/content/rohani-names-woman-head-standards-agency. World Economic Forum, The Global Gender Gap Report 2013, available at http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GenderGap_Report_2013.pdf. Art. 1401, Civil Code. Article 1210 of the Civil Code sets the age of puberty at 9 lunar years (8 years and 9 months) for girls and 15 lunar years (14 years and 7 months) for boys. Family Protection Law of the Islamic Republic of Iran 2013, art. 4.4, 21. Official news, ISNA, 16 October 2013, available at http://www.isna.ir/fa/news/. 9