Description

Sepideh Yousefzadeh of Maastricht University speaks about the special challenges facing young women in Iran.

Transcript

Rights for Adolescence Girls in Iran Host: You're watching UNICEF Television. At an international conference addressing the rights of adolescent girls, Sepideh Yousefzadeh addresses the particular challenges facing young women in Iran. Sepideh Yousefzadeh: When were talking about adolescent girls in Iran in this days, we’re not talking about hunger, we’re not talking about lack of education or lack of nutrition or malnutrition. Yes, we have disparities but we’re talking about a large population in a middle income country with its evolving issues. We have violence all over the society, in the schools, in the streets, in the families and all over. So, we need our adolescent girls to know what violence is in all its full and nature and to say no to violence. We need our adolescent girls to learn about human rights and child rights and to internalize it and to accept and to respect differences in terms of attacking them and removing them and fighting with them. We like indicators. We like indicators to set the vision and we’d like indicators to see how our adolescent should develop to acquire this agency. And a lot of violence that is going on in the current situation in Iran, it's by the people who have actually access to a very good education and they are having a very good nutrition. So, something is missing because the development has nothing healthy enough and it has not helped with decreasing the violence and what we don’t want for sure is this new generation adolescence today to repeat the same vicious cycle of violence in the next 20 years. Host: You've been watching UNICEF Television. For more information, visit UNICEF.org, Unite for Children.