GENEVA, April 21, 2021 — UN Watch broke the story today that the UN has just elected Iran to its Commission on the Status of Women, the "principal global intergovernmental body exclusively dedicated to the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of women." Click here for video.

UN Watch is calling on the U.S. and EU member states to condemn the decision.

“Electing the Islamic Republic of Iran to protect women’s rights is like making an arsonist into the town fire chief,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch. “It’s absurd — and morally reprehensible.”

“This is a black day for women's rights, and for all human rights,” said Neuer.

Iran's persecution of women is gross and systematic, both in law and in practice. The UN's own secretary-general has reported on Iran's "persistent discrimination against women and girls."

Iran's fundamentalist mullahs force women to cover their hair, with many arrested and attacked daily under the misogynistic hijab law. They require a woman to receive permission from her father to get married. The legal age for a girl to marry in Iran is 13—with even younger girls allowed to marry with paternal and judicial consent. 

Ayatollah Khamenei's regime imprisons courageous women's rights activists, such as Nasrin Sotudeh, Mojgan Keshavarz, Yasaman Aryani, and Monireh Arabshahi, for the crime of peacefully demanding their human dignity.

Why, then, did the UN just name one of the world's worst oppressors of women as a world judge of gender equality and the empowerment of women?

"Today the UN sent a message that women's rights can be sold out for backroom political deals," said Neuer, "and it let down millions of female victims in Iran and worldwide who look to the world body for protection.”

Iran's fundamentalist and misogynistic regime is now one of 45 commission members that, according to the UN, will play an instrumental role in "promoting women’s rights, documenting the reality of women’s lives throughout the world," and "shaping global standards on gender equality and the empowerment of women."

Iran won 43 votes in a secret ballot yesterday at the UN's 54-nation Economic and Social Council. Usually ECOSOC rubber-stamps nominations arranged behind closed doors by regional groups, however this time the U.S. forced an election.

"We commend the Biden Administration for forcing the vote yesterday, but they should also speak out to condemn the absurd and indeed morally obscene election of Ayatollah Khamenei's regime to the world's highest women's rights body," said Neuer.

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