Slash More UN Funding: Empowering Iranian Regime and Other Adversaries of Freedom, Peace, and Human Rights
by Majid Rafizadeh, Gatestone Institute
In an unsurprising reversal of its own stated principles, the United Nations elevated the Islamic Republic of Iran, a serial human-rights-abusing regime, by appointing it vice-chair to a body charged with overseeing the UN Charter.
The European Union failed to block the appointment, despite having previously acted to prevent Russia from holding certain international positions after it invaded Ukraine. European governments possess diplomatic leverage and experience in stopping controversial candidates, yet in this instance, they chose silence.
The message this appointment sends to the Iranian people and other victims of repressive and exploitative tyrannies is that the mass murder, torture, and blinding of dissidents are secondary to diplomatic etiquette.
The result is that rulers of Iran, which has long been the leading state sponsor of terrorism, are now in a position connected to overseeing the principles meant to restrain state violence and uphold international law. The UN’s abuses of moral decency and taxpayer funds have to be stopped – or at least financially curtailed into the irrelevance the UN so painstakingly earned.
Authoritarian governments often value symbolic recognition as much as material power: it signals to their populations that resistance is futile and that the world accepts their rule.
In the end, this episode raises profound questions about the ongoing viability of the UN and other questionable international institutions.... The organization founded to protect humanity has irrevocably detached itself from the very people it was meant to serve.
It is time to withdraw further support from the United Nations and from many other unaccountable, untransparent, unelected institutions. They had the power to stop these grotesque masquerades but chose not to act.
After the Iranian regime’s recent brutal crackdown on protesters — marked by mass murders, mass arrests, torture, and sweeping internet shutdowns designed to hide the scale of the violence — one might reasonably have expected the international community that piously lectures everyone about human rights and protecting civilians to erupt in outrage and mobilize immediately.
Instead, in an unsurprising reversal of its own stated principles, the United Nations elevated the Islamic Republic of Iran, the serial human-rights-abusing regime, by appointing it vice-chair to a body charged with overseeing the UN Charter.
UN Watch recently wrote:
“NO JOKE: The Islamic regime in Iran has just been elected as Vice-Chair of the U.N. Commission for Social Development, whose priority theme will be promoting democracy, gender equality, and ensuring tolerance and non-violence.”
The European Union failed to block the appointment, despite having previously acted to prevent Russia from holding certain international positions after it invaded Ukraine. European governments possess diplomatic leverage and experience in stopping controversial candidates, yet in this instance, they chose silence.
At the same moment as the Iranian people, protesting in the streets, were risking their lives for freedom, the world’s most prominent international organization handed their rulers a position of prestige and legitimacy.
The UN Charter -- a document born from the ashes of World War II that promises to defend human rights, prevent atrocities and protect nations from aggression -- was intended to enshrine the collective conscience of humanity. The UN, however, has once again allowed a government widely accused of violent systemic repression and large-scale extrajudicial executions to play a leadership role related to the UN Charter.
The result is that rulers of Iran, which has long been the leading state sponsor of terrorism, are now in a position connected to overseeing the principles meant to restrain state violence and uphold international law. The UN’s abuses of moral decency and taxpayer funds have to be stopped – or at least financially curtailed into the irrelevance the UN so painstakingly earned.