I have to try very hard to be able to bring good news out of Iran. That is because I want to see the people who are doing good and I report on these activities. In my reports I have documented the provisions made by the president with regard to increasing media freedom and with regard to discrimination and women's rights.
The positive change, if I can really say, is that in some areas there has been a softening of approach. For example academic freedom is still severely limited, but I have seen that some of the professors who were dismissed previously in the past few years have some form of reinstatement. Not completely, but they have been allowed to go back to some degree to their old profession or universities. Many students who were expelled in the past three years have been allowed to go back to university. There's been some form of relaxation in that regard and the oral rhetoric from the government has in many ways diminished.
I've seen, on occasion, the president speaking in a different manner to the supreme leader on women's rights this year. A slight nuance perhaps, but at the end of the day not sufficiently strong enough to change anything in the country. I am inclined to document these pronouncements, to be able to amplify these pronouncements, and to be able to encourage these pronouncements moving forward.
With regard to the bill on feminist strengthening, the initial draft did have this provision where single women would be marginalized, but there are reports that this may be reviewed. I haven't seen the final case of it and it hasn't been passed to the parliament. I'm hoping that it does get through and that this provision will not be there.
On the other hand, a year and a half ago, the Iran government withdrew the bill on what they call the bill of formal attorneyship, which is designed in my view to increase control by the authorities over the bar association. It was withdrawn at the end of spring last year, but then has come back into the parliamentary process.
There are very few steps in terms of what can be done, but then more backsliding.