Cherie attacks treatment of women

Mrs Blair denounced the unequal treatment of women on religious grounds in some societies as a "distortion" of the true message of faiths such as Islam, which she said shared with all the major world religions an "insistence on the dignity of all God's people".

She was critical of human rights advocates in the West who suggest that women's emancipation cannot be exported to the Middle East or parts of Asia and Africa because of cultural and religious sensitivities.

Women's rights are a "universal ethic that cuts across all cultures and all religions ... and imperative for our shared humanity", she said.

In a high profile speech given under her professional name of Cherie Booth QC at Chatham House in London, the leading human rights lawyer acknowledged that Britain and other Western nations had more to do to deliver equal pay and career opportunities to women.

But she highlighted new laws in Egypt which give men and women different rights on divorce, as well as Orthodox Jewish practices under which a woman cannot divorce without her husband's consent.

In some parts of the world, domestic violence was still not regarded as a crime, widows were ostracised and women were treated effectively as their husbands' property, she said. In many areas "proclaimed adherence to a specific religion or system of belief or culture is intimately tied to women's continuing discrimination and abuse," said Mrs Blair.

And she bluntly rejected any suggestion that such practices could be justified by reference to religion.

"We can be certain that the overwhelming majority of people in our country, along with legal experts and campaigners, would be appalled if they thought that such mistreatment was taking place within their family or local community," she said.

"But what is striking is that there remain those who try to justify or excuse such discrimination and denial of human rights elsewhere by reference to different cultural or religious standards. We simply can't go along with this view."