IRAN: Lawmakers shelve proposed legal amendments said to restrict women’s rights

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A rare victory was won by Iranian moderates Monday. The legislature opted to shelve a controversial set of proposals that activists said would have further restricted women’s rights.

According to a report by the Iranian Labor News Agency, Iran’s parliament has decided to send three articles of the family law bill back into committee for additional study.

‘According to the notification of the lawmakers and in consultation with the judiciary branch, seemingly the articles 22, 23 and 24 contain some Islamic shortcomings,’ said parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani, according to the news agency. ‘Therefore, they will be returned to legal and judiciary commission to be corrected.’

Parliament pulled a similar move to effectively kill the proposed changes to restrict women’s rights in child birth, marriage and inheritance last year. Reformists, battered by hardliners who have the upper hand in the political establishment, relished the rare, if modest, victory.

‘Now it is proven that the lobbying of former female lawmakers in parliament was successful and that the reformist [members of parliament] are still influential, even if they are no longer in parliament,’ Mozhgan Faraji, an Iranian journalist covering the debates on the floor of parliament, told Babylon & Beyond.

-- Ramin Mostaghim in Tehran