Egypt's Reaction to UN Women's Proposals

A few days ago, I posted an article about a woman from Erlangen, Germany who was speaking at the UN on the topic of forced female genital mutilation. This was all part of International Women's Day, which rolls around in March. Well, the UN has come up with a series of proposals and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt is none to happy about it. The below article is written by Dan Murphy in the Christian Science Monitor.

http://news.yahoo.com/egypts-muslim-brotherhood-says-un-proposal-women-destroy-180243943.html

Just for the record, last March, the UN issued the below report on Status of Women (2012).

http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2012/wom1904.doc.htm

"Deploring the dire economic and social conditions of Palestinian women and girls in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, the Council, by that text, would reaffirm that the Israeli occupation remained the major obstacle for Palestinian women with regard to their advancement, self-reliance and integration in their society’s development."

Of course. Nothing like specifics to make your (political ) argument.

Yet, last year, the UN did, in fact, pass a resolution condemning the practice of forced female genital mutilation.

http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/03/op-ed-violence-against-women-must-end/

Here is this year's statement on International Women's Day by Secretary General Ban Ki Moon.

http://www.un.org/en/events/womensday/sgsmessage.shtml

Here is the statement by Michelle Bachelet, UN Undersecretary and executive director of  UN Women:

http://www.unwomen.org/2013/03/a-promise-is-a-promise-time-for-action-to-end-violence-against-women/

Nothing about forced female genital mutilation there.

Here is the main page for 2013's International Women's Day at the UN:

http://www.un.org/en/events/womensday/

Here is a report from the past week that implies disagreement over abortion rights and some other unidentified issue in Africa that has to do with cultural or traditional practices (hmmm).

http://www.lifenews.com/2013/03/07/un-agreement-on-violence-against-women-threatened-by-abortion-advocates/

"The real issue however, is a proposal from the African Group. Last year the United States and European delegations did not want a document that gave any latitude to sovereign states in implementing CSW policies. This year African nations have again put forth similar language, recognizing the sovereign right of countries to implement policies in accordance with their own traditions, religions, and cultures. This has been common language throughout the history of UN social policy negotiations.

The proposed paragraph also states that tradition, religion and culture cannot be used to defend human rights abuses. Bachelet seemed to echo the paragraph when she told reporters, “culture, tradition or religion should not be used as an excuse, because no culture or religion really supports violence against women.”

Here, Bachelet implies forced female genital mutilation without actually naming it.

Courtesy of The Independent, here is today's article by Nina O'Farrell reporting on the week's events, which end today.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/tackling-fgm-violence-against-women-and-forced-marriage-around-the-world-8536231.html

Here's my question: What happened to forced female genital mutilation? Has the UN-this year- explicitly condemned this practice by name and called for an end to it? I'm still looking. If you find it let me know.