Women's rights. -News and Views.

United Nations a joke

Iran's inclusion in a women's rights commission just the latest punch line ?

Published: Sunday, May 2, 2010 at 3:15 a.m.
Last Modified: Saturday, May 1, 2010 at 4:37 p.m.

The United Nations this week selected Iran for its Commission on the Status of Women, a 45-nation body that exists entirely to review the conduct of nations that violate women's rights, issue reports detailing their failings and monitor success in improving women's equality.

To put that into perspective, let us remember that Iran is a nation where:

u A senior cleric declared revealing clothing worn by women is the cause of recent earthquakes. "Many women who do not dress modestly ... lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which (consequently) increases earthquakes," said Iranian cleric Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi.

u Tehran's chief of police recently declared that women who appear to have suntans will be arrested and imprisoned for violating Islamic law.

u When it was announced that Iran might be given a seat on the commission, Iranian activists began circulating a petition demanding their own country be excluded. The petition said of Iran, in part, "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 the change of such laws."

Saudi Arabia, China and Cuba are currently members of the U.N. Human Rights Commission and, in 2003, Libya chaired the commission. Allowing such nations to oversee any aspect of a human rights body is (perhaps) laughable.

But members are elected to these U.N. commissions based only on region. Each part of the world is entitled to a set number of members. Two Asian region seats were open on the Women's Commission selection, and thanks to a brokered deal, only Thailand and Iran applied, so keeping Iran off was impossible.

So this, 65 years after its founding, is where the U.N. finds itself. It is controlled almost entirely by geographic and ethnic alliances that allow abusers of women to oversee women's rights coalitions and nations that ignore all morally acceptable rules governing human rights to influence human rights policy.

Its mandates and sanctions are ignored. Its humanitarian missions, while often well intended, are ineffective and rife with corruption.

It rarely makes the world better. It often makes it worse.