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Today, International Women’s Day, will be observed as part of the 47th session of the Commission on the Status of Women, which opened this week at the United Nations headquarters in New York. The CSW is focusing on women’s human rights and the elimination of all forms of violence against women and girls.

In the Arab/Muslim Middle East, the situation is critical. According to the State Department’s Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, violence against women in the region is widespread. Under Islamic law (Sha’aria), Muslim female heirs receive half the amount of a male heir’s inheritance; Christian widows of Muslims have no inheritance rights. In a Sha’aria court, the testimony of one man equals that of two women. In Iran, Sudan and Saudi Arabia, women cannot travel abroad without the consent of their husbands or fathers. Women are expected to dress properly in public (e.g. covered from head to toe) in Iran, where otherwise they may be sentenced to flogging or imprisonment, and in Saudi Arabia, where the Mutawwa’in constantly harass women to enforce the dressing code.

Saudi women are not allowed to drive and cannot run a business by themselves. They have to enter buses by separate rear entrances and sit in separate sections from where men sit. Saudi girls are not permitted to participate in sport at school and colleges. Saudi women are not even admitted to a hospital for medical treatment without the consent of a male relative. While women have access to education at the university level, certain studies such as journalism, engineering and architecture are off-limits.

In Iran, where the penal code includes mandatory stoning of adulterous women and men, life for young women is so miserable that, according to a New York Times report, some street girls began to disguise as boys to avoid rape or falling victim to prostitution rings. «I wouldn’t have been able to survive in women’s dress. I would have been finished by now,» explained one such girl.

A 2000 study showed that 97 percent of married Egyptian women and 90 percent of Sudanese women have undergone genital mutilation. In Sudan, southern women are forced into slavery and regularly raped.

If one were to create an «horror index» to measure the abuse to which women and girls are subjected in the Arab and Muslim world, the «honor-killing» phenomenon would rank close to the top. In Jordan alone, about 25 percent of all killings committed there in 2001 were of the type.

Yotam Feldner of the Middle East Media and Research Institute described some cases: ‘Kifaya Husayn, a 16-year-old Jordanian girl, was lashed to a chair by her 32-year-old brother. He gave her a drink of water and told her to recite an Islamic prayer. Then he slashed her throat. Immediately afterward, he ran out into the street, waving the bloody knife and crying, I have killed my sister to cleanse my honor. Kifaya’s crime? She was raped by another brother, a 21-year-old man.»

An Egyptian, who strangled his unmarried pregnant daughter and then cut her corpse in eight pieces, explained that he killed her because he had «to put an end to this shame.» A Palestinian who hanged his sister with a rope said: »Society taught us from childhood that blood is the only solution to wash the honor.»

Taking perverse advantage of the societal stigma that «tainted» women carry in Palestinian society, Fatah men have seduced young women into illicit relationships to then blackmail them into recruitment for suicide operations — thus letting these women «redeem» themselves, Palestinian sources have told Israeli officials. So far, more than 20 young Palestinian women have committed terrorist attacks, including suicide-bombings, against Israelis.

With Iran and Sudan (Egypt until last year) sitting as members of the Commission on the Status of Women, it remains unclear to what extent the commission will manage to avoid politicization and stay focused on the matter concerning violence against women. For the sake of the scores of suffering women of the Middle East alone, let’s hope they succeed.

Julián Schvindlerman is a political analyst in Geneva, and a member of the American Jewish Committee.