In the name of God

Your Excellency Antonio Guterres,

 Secretary-General of the United Nations

 Greetings.

 This is an urgent statement and message from the Vice-Presidency for Women and Family Affairs of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations aiming to emphasise that the major humanitarian catastrophe afflicting women and children in the occupied Palestine for many years has now reached its apex, and that an appalling crime is being taken place.

 At a time when the whole world has realised the importance of the warm embrace of the family, an unequal war has erupted these days in Palestine, disrupting many families in Gaza.

 Many a woman who has lost all her family members, and many a child who has faced the lifeless body of their parents! Don’t these incidents prick the conscience of the international community?

What has happened to the United Nations that at one point rushes to talk about women’s rights and human rights and takes weird decisions due to an unsubstantiated report about women, while at another time turns a blind eye to the real-time images of the mutilated bodies women and children?

Excellency Mr Guterres,

 Most of those killed and injured in the oppressed city of Gaza are women and children. Presently, thousands of pregnant women have been denied of basic healthcare services. Among women of this city, there are hundreds of women who have recently been delivered of babies, hence in need of intensive care for both mother and child, but having access to little facilities.

 Moreover, unfortunately, there is news of disconnection of water supply and electricity as well as the shortage of food stuff and medicines, while the immediate victim of these shortages are women and children. Currently, even Gaza’s hospitals are not immune from bombardments, and hundreds of people have lost their lives due to the savage attack on the hospital.

 Dear Mr Guterres,

Isn’t it time the international community took a practical and transformational measure in support of the oppressed people of Gaza? How can the massacre of defenceless women and their children and disruption of the warm embrace of families at the hands of a usurper regime, which lacks international legitimacy, be justified except for being an instance of racism and genocide? We are talking about people the only place left to whom is the Gaza Strip — a place such as a cage subjected to serious restrictions and merciless genocide by the occupying regime in recent years, and now that they want to break this cage and object to the various oppressions of this regime, they are savagely massacred.

 Your Excellency Mr Guterres,

 The usurper regime of Israel has not yet stopped its vicious plots and still tries to expel the same few people out of this limited territory in order to attain its nefarious objectives. Isn’t it time you, as the Secretary-General of the United Nations, cried out for saving women and children who have been denied of the least number of natural rights?

Dear Mr Guterres,

The international community awaits your different behaviour. Hasn’t the sound of the lamentations of the oppressed mothers who have lost their children, that of innocent infants who have lost their mothers, and the cries of dread of children of Gaza reached the ears of the United Nations members yet?

 Dear Mr Guterres,

How the United Nations can belong to the nations while no sense of pain due to the suffering and tribulations of the People of Gaza is conveyed from that body to the international community? As Sa`di, the great Iranian poet says:

 The sons of Adam are limbs of the same body

 Having been created of one essence

 When the calamity of times afflicts one limb The other limbs

cannot remain at rest

Best regards,

Ensieh Khazali

 I.R. of Iran’s Vice-President for Women and Family Affairs