EXCLUSIVE: U.N. Elects Iran to Commission on Women's Rights
By Joseph Abrams
- FOXNews.com

Without fanfare, the United Nations this week elected Iran to its Commission on the Status of Women, handing a four-year seat on the influential human rights body to a theocratic state in which stoning is enshrined in law and lashings are required for women judged "immodest."


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Reuters

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gestures during a speech in March 2010. Iran has been elected to the U.N.'s Commission on the Status of Women after a failed attempt to secure a seat on the Human Rights Council.
NEW YORK — Without fanfare, the United Nations this week elected Iran to its Commission on the Status of Women, handing a four-year seat on the influential human rights body to a theocratic state in which stoning is enshrined in law and lashings are required for women judged "immodest."

Just days after Iran abandoned a high-profile bid for a seat on the U.N. Human Rights Council, it began a covert campaign to claim a seat on the Commission on the Status of Women, which is "dedicated exclusively to gender equality and advancement of women," according to its website.

Buried 2,000 words deep in a U.N. press release distributed Wednesday on the filling of "vacancies in subsidiary bodies," was the stark announcement: Iran, along with representatives from 10 other nations, was "elected by acclamation," meaning that no open vote was requested or required by any member states — including the United States.

The U.S. currently holds one of the 45 seats on the body, a position set to expire in 2012. The U.S. Mission to the U.N. did not return requests for comment on whether it actively opposed elevating Iran to the women's commission.

Iran's election comes just a week after one of its senior clerics declared that women who wear revealing clothing are to blame for earthquakes, a statement that created an international uproar — but little affected their bid to become an international arbiter of women's rights.

"Many women who do not dress modestly ... lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which (consequently) increases earthquakes," said the respected cleric, Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi.

As word of Iran's intention to join the women's commission came out, a group of Iranian activists circulated a petition to the U.N. asking that member states oppose its election.

"Iran's discriminatory laws demonstrate that the Islamic Republic does not believe in gender equality," reads the letter, signed by 214 activists and endorsed by over a dozen human rights bodies.

The letter draws a dark picture of the status of women in Iran: "women lack the ability to choose their husbands, have no independent right to education after marriage, no right to divorce, no right to child custody, have no protection from violent treatment in public spaces, are restricted by quotas for women's admission at universities, and are arrested, beaten, and imprisoned for peacefully seeking change of such laws."

The Commission on the Status of Women is supposed to conduct review of nations that violate women's rights, issue reports detailing their failings, and monitor their success in improving women's equality.

Yet critics of Iran's human rights record say the country has taken "every conceivable step" to deter women's equality.

"In the past year, it has arrested and jailed mothers of peaceful civil rights protesters," wrote three prominent democracy and human rights activists in an op-ed published online Tuesday by Foreign Policy Magazine.

"It has charged women who were seeking equality in the social sphere — as wives, daughters and mothers — with threatening national security, subjecting many to hours of harrowing interrogation. Its prison guards have beaten, tortured, sexually assaulted and raped female and male civil rights protesters."

Iran's elevation to the commission comes as a black eye just days after the U.S. helped lead a successful effort to keep Iran off the Human Rights Council, which is already dominated by nations that are judged by human rights advocates as chronic violators of essential freedoms. The current membership of the women's commission is little different.

Though it touts itself as "the principal global policy-making body" on women's rights, the makeup of the commission is mostly determined by geography and its membership is a hodge-podge of some human rights advocates (including the U.S., Japan, and Germany) and other nations with stark histories of rights violations.

The number of seats on the commission is based on the number of countries in a region, no matter how small their populations or how scant their respect for rights. The commission is currently made up of 13 members from Africa, 11 from Asia, nine from Latin America and the Caribbean, eight from Western Europe and North America, and four from Eastern Europe.

During this round of "elections," which were not competitive and in which no real votes were cast, two seats opened up for the Asian bloc for the 2011-2015 period. Only two nations put forward candidates to fill empty spots — Iran and Thailand. As at most such commissions in the U.N., backroom deals determined who would gain new seats at the women's rights body.

The activists' letter sent to the U.N. Tuesday argued that it would be better if the Asian countries proffered only one candidate, instead of elevating Iran to the commission.

"We, a group of gender-equality activists, believe that for the sake of women's rights globally, an empty seat for the Asia group on (the commission) is much preferable to Iran's membership. We are writing to alert you to the highly negative ramifications of Iran’s membership in this international body."

A spokeswoman for the U.N.'s Department of Economic and Social Affairs, which oversees the commission, did not return phone calls or e-mails seeking comment.

When its term begins in 2011, Iran will be joined by 10 other countries: Belgium, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Estonia, Georgia, Jamaica, Iran, Liberia, the Netherlands, Spain, Thailand and Zimbabwe.

When its term begins in 2011, Iran will be joined by 10 other countries: Belgium, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Estonia, Georgia, Jamaica, Iran, Liberia, the Netherlands, Spain, Thailand and Zimbabwe.

dogma wrote:Its worth remembering that the US, Western Europe, Japan, and South Korea are anomalies when it comes to the cultural and legal treatment of women, not the norm.

WarOne wrote:
Do you SEE what Japan does to women in anime and manga, and something else starting with an h and doesn't end very well at all.

WarOne wrote:
But I do see that the need for global representation of women is needed, as not all societies adhere to the laws and beliefs to which Americans hold about women and the rights of women, not matter how divergent they are. But in context, this is about women's rights, and I believe that women should have rights that they can decide for themselves and within the context of what they and others like they believe.

UN Press Release wrote:
Next, the Council elected 11 new members to fill an equal number of vacancies on the Commission on the Status of Women for four-year terms beginning at the first meeting of the Commission’s fifty-sixth session in 2011 and expiring at the close of its fifty-ninth session in 2015. The Democratic Republic of the Congo, Liberia and Zimbabwe were elected from the Group of African States; Iran and Thailand were elected from the Group of Asian States; Estonia and Georgia were elected from the Group of Eastern European States; Jamaica was elected from the Group of Latin American and Caribbean States; and Belgium, Netherlands and Spain were elected from the Group of Western European and Other States.

dogma wrote:Its not the Commission on Women's Rights. Its the Commission on the Status of Women. Their mandate deals with assessing progress towards the rights of women as laid down in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It issues some reports, and that's pretty much it.

Ahtman wrote:At what point do we start posting links to articles about a women being put to death because she was raped, or that women cause earthquakes to show how progressive Iran is?

WarOne wrote:
But it SHOULD be. This is like the pre-meeting for the meeting for the planning stage to Operation Overlord. We need more direct and firm action to decide how to assess women's rights!

Kilkrazy wrote:If countries like Iran are excluded from the UN decision making process, it makes the organisation look like an attempt at western hegemony.

Kilkrazy wrote:If countries like Iran are excluded from the UN decision making process, it makes the organisation look like an attempt at western hegemony.

Kilkrazy wrote:If it is a farce why rely on its resolutions to legitimise declaring war on Iraq?

Frazzled wrote:Don't be daft. I don't want them "quieted." But putting Iran, which stones women to death, on the Commission on Women's Rights is not sane, but very typical of the UN.

Da Boss wrote:

Frazzled wrote:Don't be daft. I don't want them "quieted." But putting Iran, which stones women to death, on the Commission on Women's Rights is not sane, but very typical of the UN.

You're talking about Iran like it's a monolithic block full of clones with a hivemind. When people talk like that about the US, you blow a gasket, and rightly so.

Frazzled wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:If it is a farce why rely on its resolutions to legitimise declaring war on Iraq?

Why indeed.

۞ Jack ۞ wrote:No offence mortified, but any nation that states women cause earthquakes is talking from its arse.
In turn, they should be silenced.

However, you do get the odd fat bitch that may cause an earthquake, but not often.