That's a very tough one. I think we have to reply frankly that, yes, there are different cultures, there are different values, there are different religions, but there is one declaration that all members of the United Nations are committed to, and that's the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. When it was prepared, not only was it prepared by Christians and Jews, but Muslims and leadership from the Muslim community globally at that time. All religions and non-religious groups were considered in drafting this universal declaration.
I think that has to be stressed to leaders of authoritarian states and brutal states, like the one Iran is, especially in their treatment of women, but not just women. Yes, you have a different culture and you have a different religion, but where there is a clash between the cultural practice and a right found in the UN system, the practice should yield.
A wonderful NGO declaration on human rights was prepared by Asian NGOs in 1993—I think I'm quite right on this. It's worth tracking down. It's a wonderful declaration about human rights prepared, I repeat, by Asians, not westerners, and they make this point that is often made by, for example, ordinary Iranian citizens—and I know that in the case of Iran. In all these authoritarian societies, it's the heads of these societies who like to invoke their authoritarian tradition as an excuse for not complying with the elementary rights that their ordinary citizens would want.
Whether their ordinary citizens use rights language or not is another question. Young girls want to go to school as well as young boys, whether young girls in Iran say it's a right or not. They want to have the right to pack up and move down to the next town if they want. They want mobility rights whether they use rights language or not.
But those rights are, I repeat, in the universal declaration. Every member of the UN is obliged to comply with them. Finally, when there's a clash between a culture and a right, then the culture at some point has to yield.