The Rosett Report
Last week, when Iran withdrew its candidacy for a seat on the United Nations Human Rights Council, I got messages from a number of folks who were almost sorry to see Iran drop out of the race. That’s not because they like Iran’s regime. It’s because seating Iran on the rotten Human Rights Council would have been an act so grotesque that anyone could grasp the problems with the Council – much as Libya chairing the old Human Rights Commission in 2003 served to discredit that rotten body once and for all.
Well, for all those who were disappointed that Iran’s regime will not become the convenient poster-child for the UN’s travesty of a Human Rights Council, there’s a carnival of cold comfort ahead. The UN’s Economic and Social Council has just elected Iran to a seat on the UN’s women’s rights commission — formally known as the Commission on the Status of Women. This outfit describes itself on its web site as the UN’s “principal global policy making body” for “gender equality and advancement of women.”
As Hot Air notes: “I think Neda would have wanted it this way, don’t you?”
But wait! There’s more. Fox News reporter Joseph Abrams unearthed the bombshell about Iran taking a seat on the women’s rights commission, no thanks to any of the UN’s well-heeled press offices. The UN had quietly buried the announcement in a lengthy press release, under the riveting headline: “In resumed organizational session, Economic and Social Council solidifies plans for forthcoming substantive session, fills vacancies in subsidiary bodies.” (I hope Fox is giving Joe combat pay for reading this stuff). Joe’s article is here, with details about the apparent failure of the U.S. Mission to even challenge Iran’s bid by calling for a vote. Iran was “elected” by “acclamation.”
And, yes! There’s yet more. Entombed about 6,000 syllables deep under the headline of that same press release (pour yourself a stiff drink — here it is) is the information that Iran has also just obtained three other seats.
Iran is one of 16 new members just elected to four-year-terms on the UN’s Commission on Science and Technology for Development. (Maybe they can provide handy tips on capacity-building for nuclear bomb technology in UN-sanctioned developing economies).
Iran is also one of 15 countries just elected to the governing council of the UN settlements agency, or UN-Habitat (another of those countries just elected is Venezuela, ruled by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s close chum, Hugo Chavez … is this part of the project Ahmadinejad and Chavez jointly announced last year to build a “nuclear village?”).
And, for the UN’s Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, four members were just seated by acclamation — one of them being a candidate from Iran.
Oh, and by the way, Iran also sits on the governing council of the UN Environment Program, and the executive boards of UNICEF, the UN Development Program (last year it chaired the UNDP board), UNICEF and the World Food Program (which has also just elected Cuba and Sudan to three year seats on its board).
On top of all this, it looks like Ahmadinejad may soon be making yet another of his many trips to NY, to dominate the UN’s Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference, which opens at UN Headquarters in Manhattan next week.
Not for the first time, the thought occurs that it would be a lot easier to just ship the entire UN — lock, stock and seating arrangements — to Iran. Why should Americans bankroll, dignify and host these abominations?
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