Anton Haddad was the first Bahá'í to arrive in the New World. [BFA1p26]

The publication of The Divine Art of Living by Mary M Rabb. It had been serialized in Star of the West from Vol 7 No 16 (Dec 31, 1916) to Vol 8 No 13 (Nov 4, 1917) and later in World Order Vol 1 No 1 April 1940 to Vol 6 No 1 April, 1940. In 1924 was published in a leather bound volume and was reprinted in 1926 by Brentan's of New York. [Collins3.39 - 3.40]
• The full text of the book is available online.

The Bahá'í International Community, in a letter addressed to Mr Trygve Lie, the Secretary-General of the United Nation, informed the United Nations of the spiritual nature of the Bahá'í Faith. [BW12p598-600]
• Also included was a prayer card.
• See as well Bahá'í Relationship with United Nations.

Reynaldo Galindo Pohl, a prominent diplomat, and professor of law from El Salvador served as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Iran from 1986 to 1995. He visited Iran three times between 1990 and 1992, but after his third visit, he was barred from visiting Iran. [Wikipedia]
• His eight years as Special Representative were particularly significant, principally for a series of reports that authoritatively documented the intense, often brutal, violations committed by Iran against its own citizens. These were critical in calling the world's attention to the brutality of the regime at the time. Prof. Pohl's 1993 report to the Commission was notable for its disclosure of the so-called "Baha'i Question" memorandum, a previously secret 1991 letter issued by the Supreme Revolutionary Cultural Council that established a national policy for dealing with Iran's Bahá'ís, setting limits on their educational, economic and cultural activities. [BWNS879; BBC 1993 Jan]

The largest gathering of world leaders in history assembled at the United Nations to attend the World Summit for Children. Led by 71 heads of State and Government and 88 other senior officials, mostly at the ministerial level, the World Summit adopted a Declaration on the Survival, Protection and Development of Children and a Plan of Action for implementing the Declaration in the 1990s.
• The Bahá'í International Community played a key role among non-governmental organizations in promoting the concept of rights for children.
• World Declaration on the Survival, Protection and Development of Children.
• Plan of Action for Implementing the World Declaration on the Survival, Protection and Development of Children in the 1990s.
• Goals for Children and Development in the 1990s.

Following the resignation of Galindo Pohl, the UNCHR appointed Maurice Copithorne, a Canadian lawyer, as the Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Iran.
• On 22 April 2002, the UNCHR voted not to renew the mandate of the Special Rapporteur, a decision condemned by Human Rights Watch (HRW) and the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF).
• The BIC paid tribute to him upon his passing on 14 February, 2019.

The 50th session of the Commission on the Status of Women was held at the UN Headquarters in New York. [UN Women]
• The Bahá'í International Community presented Beyond Legal Reforms: Culture and Capacity in the Eradication of Violence Against Women and Girls.

The 52nd session of the Commission on the Status of Women was held at the United Nations headquarters in New York. [UN Women]
• The Bahá'í International Community presented Mobilizing Institutional, Legal and Cultural Resources to Achieve Gender Equality.
• Baha'i International Community Representative, Ms. Bani Dugal was elected to serve as the President of the NGO Committee on Freedom of Religion or Belief in New York. During the 52nd Commission on Status of Women. [BIC History 2008]

The publication of The Bahá'í Question: Cultural Cleansing in Iran by the Bahá'í International Community.
• It was made available in English and in Spanish.

The UN General Assembly voted unanimously to create UN Women, (General Assembly resolution 64/289) a new entity merging the four UN offices focusing on gender equality: the UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), the Division for the Advancement of Women (DAW), the Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues, and the International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women. Following the passage of the resolution, the Bahá'í International Community, as one of the core NGOs leading the campaign for the new gender entity, received congratulatory notes from NGOs and women around the world expressing their appreciation and support for its role in the four-year campaign. [BIC History; UN Women]
• See as well A short history of the Commission on the Status of Women (PDF).

In March 2011, the UN Human Rights Council re-established the mandate of Special Rapporteur to Iran, which they had terminated in 2002, under the title "Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran". The Commission had stopped appointing investigators for Iran in an effort to encourage a dialogue with the country on human rights. Then, in 2005, the Commission was disbanded in favour of a new entity, the Human Rights Council, which, for a variety of reasons, was considerably more reluctant to criticize individual countries. Human rights activists believed the moral authority behind having such a UN-appointed special rapporteur was a critical step in bringing to light the severity of rights violations in Iran. [One Country]
• Ahmed Shaheed was appointed and his mandate lasted from 2011 to 2016 when he went on to become the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief.
• An Iranian parliamentarian referred to the United Nations Human Rights Rapporteur Ahmed Shaheed as a Zionist and CIA agent. [Islamic Republic News Agency 29 March 2014]

The release of the report entitled Inciting Hatred by the Bahá'í International Community which summarized each of the 400-plus documents or articles that were collected during the period of this survey, from 17 December 2009 to 16 May 2011 to prove that the Iranian regime has a systematic programme to demonize the Bahá'í community in the eyes of their compatriots.

  The report says in part "Despite this prolonged and systematic attack on its integrity and values, Iran's Bahá'í community is not dispirited, demoralized or downtrodden. Nor have they risen up to counter-attack their oppressors with force or any trace of bitterness. Rather they have calmly stated their case and called for their fundamental human rights with dignity and courtesy, winning the admiration of their compatriots, observers and, in some cases, even those who are obligated to oppress them under government policy."

• Inciting Hatred: Iran's media campaign to demonize Bahá'ís is available in English and Farsi.

In contribution to the 57th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women the Bahá'í International Community issued a statement entitled Towards the Eradication of Violence Against Women and Girls.
• PDF..

Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran, Asma Jahangir, in her report, shared with that country on this date, listed the names of some 77 Bahá'ís imprisoned in that country.
• Report.

In the 42nd Regular Session of the Human Rights Council, the International Bahá'í Community presented an Oral Statement addressing the High Commissioner report on Yemen.
• See as well the BIC's statement to the 40th Session of the UN Human Rights Council on the 20th of March, 2019.

This publication is available on the Routledge site as an ebook for loan if your institution has access. It may be previewed at this location. (Click on "Preview Book")

Javaid Rehman, the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran, presented his report to UN's Human Rights Council detailing the scale of human rights abuses perpetrated by the regime in Tehran against members of many groups in the country. (It should be noted that his requests to visit Iran were denied and so he compiled his report using data collected from government, non-governmental and media sources. He also interviewed victims of abuses, along with their families and lawyers.) In the report he revealed that women, girls, human rights advocates, ethnic minorities, writers, journalists and people with dual nationality are among those targeted by the regime. They faced abuse, torture, arbitrary detention, harassment, forced confessions, and even the death penalty. What follows are some of the details of his report:
• Women: Females suffered as a result of deep-rooted discrimination in law and day-to-day life. Domestic violence, acid attacks, patriarchal values and misogynist behaviours, discriminatory legal provisions were among the issues women faced. Women's rights advocates, both women and men, including those who campaign against compulsory veiling laws were targeted. The enforcement of veiling laws by the police, Basij militia and vigilante "morality police" has often resulted in violence against women, including acid attacks and murder.
            Rehman's report also detailed how blatant gender discrimination permeated almost all aspects of the law and daily life in Iran, including marriage, divorce, employment and culture, with the result that women are treated as second-class citizens. He called on the Iranian government to repeal discriminatory laws and ratify the Convention on the Elimination of All forms of Discrimination Against Women. Iran is one of the few states not to have signed it.
• Child marriages: In just six months during the previous year, 16,000 girls between the ages of 10 and 14 were married in Iran. Girls as young as 13 could marry in Iran with their father's permission, and at an even younger age if authorized by a judge.
• Protesters: There has been a brutal crackdown by security forces on protesters during the nationwide demonstrations on November 19th. Firearms were used "in a manner that amounted to a serious violation of international human rights law," resulting in the deaths of more than 300 people, including women and children. In the days following the protests the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps raided homes, hospitals, schools and workplaces to arrest demonstrators, including children, and crush what Iranian officials described as "a very dangerous conspiracy." More than 7,000 detainees were held in secret facilities without access to lawyers, many of them in solitary confinement where they were tortured, starved and forced to make false confessions. The targeting of relatives in an effort to force human rights activists to halt their campaigning has been widely documented.
• Capital punishment: He also voiced concern about the high rate of death sentences in Iran, especially the execution of child offenders, and the recent cases in which protesters received the death penalty. There have also been reports of secret executions in connection with the protests "following unfair trials and after the systematic use of torture to extract forced confessions."
• The targeting of human rights activists, journalists, labour rights campaigners, dual and foreign nationals, and lawyers.
• Violation of the right to freedom of expression: The "authorities" repeatedly disrupted telecommunications. Telegram, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube are "permanently blocked and inaccessible without circumvention tools, in an attempt to prevent protesters from revealing regime abuses to the world. Internet shutdowns and the blanket blocking of websites and applications represent a violation of the right to freedom of expression.
• Minorities: There was ongoing discrimination against ethnic, religious and sexual minorities. The report included details of executions and enforced disappearances of political prisoners from ethnic minorities. Bahá'í have been arrested for membership in the Faith and many Gonabadi Dervishes also remain in prison.
• Forced evictions: Many ethnic minorities have been evicted and their homes have been destroyed.
• Since completing his report further "disturbing incidents" involving the targeting of minorities have come to light, including: more than 20 executions of Baloch prisoners; the "suspicious" death of a Dervish follower; excessive use of force against protesters in Sistan and Balochistan province; the detention of 100 Kurdish activists, and house raids and land confiscations targeting members of the Baha'i faith. Individuals who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender also experience human rights violations and widespread discrimination.
• COVID-19: The Iranian government has continued the targeting of journalists and writers who report on subjects such as corruption and the COVID-19 pandemic. Health experts who question the regime's management of the health crisis also reportedly face prosecution or losing their jobs. Although international sanctions have hampered Iranian efforts to respond to the pandemic, it criticized the government's "opaque and inadequate coronavirus response which has resulted in excess deaths, including the deaths of medical workers who were left to fend for themselves without sufficient protective equipment." Detainees were also abandoned in "overcrowded and unhygienic" prisons. According to the World Health Organization, in June 2020 there were 211,000 prisoners in Iran's state prisons, 2.5 times the official capacity.
• The Report: English; French.

The BIC statement can be viewed here.

In September 2021, the Secretary-General responded with his report, Our Common Agenda, a wake-up call to speed up the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals and propel the commitments contained in the UN75 Declaration. In some cases, the proposals addressed gaps that had emerged since 2015, requiring new intergovernmental agreements. The report, therefore, called for a Summit of the Future to forge a new global consensus on readying for a future that is rife with risks but also opportunities. The General Assembly welcomed the submission of the "rich and substantive" report and agreed to hold the Summit on 22-23 September 2024, preceded by a ministerial meeting in 2023. An action-oriented Pact for the Future is expected to be agreed by Member States through intergovernmental negotiations on issues they decide to take forward. [Road to the Summit of the Future]

See Speechless 4 December 2009 for a chronological biography as well as a bibliography / webliogrphy of other works on him.

See NUVO for a photo of his eviction from the New York Daily News archive and a short biography.

See as well BFA1p90-93; OBCC18-21, 25-26.