UN names Iran to panel on women's rights

UNITED NATIONS — The UN has quietly made way for Iran to join the global body's Commission on the Status of Women Friday, just days after very publicly suspending Libya from its Human Rights Council.

The Islamic Republic — which last year sentenced a supposedly adulterous woman to death by stoning and deploys police to harass women not deemed to be sufficiently covered — became one of the commission's 45 members as part of a group of 11 incoming countries.

As many countries left the commission at the close of its 55th session on Friday, opening those slots for the new members, each of which the UN General Assembly elected or — in Iran's case — named by acclamation last April to serve for four years.

"The vote happened so long ago that everyone just forgets that the changing of the guard is happening now," said Anne Bayefsky, a Canadian political science professor who heads the monitoring group Eye on the UN. Her organization issued a video Friday highlighting the case Iran made to win its commission spot.

"Iran's presence will be a real affront to women, but it will also show how the UN is back to business-as-usual despite the great fanfare this week surrounding the action it took on Libya."

Joseph Deiss, the Swiss president of the UN General Assembly, concluded debate Tuesday by saying he was "proud" to have chaired the session in which the 192 member states unanimously agreed to suspend Libya's membership of the organization's highest human rights body.

Libya's presence on the 47-member council had become an acute embarrassment for the UN in the face of daily televised scenes showing attacks by Libyan government forces on unarmed Libyan civilians.

But Eye on the UN highlights — in a bulletin released alongside the video — that Libya continues to serve on the UN Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice, the UN Committee on Information and the executive board of UN Women.

The group points to numerous other examples of what it describes as misplaced UN "authority figures." Among them, Cuba and Belarus sit on the UN Commission on Sustainable Development; Somalia and Sudan are members of the executive committee of the UN's refugee agency; and Iran, Kazakhstan and China sit alongside Libya on the UN Committee on Information.

Rona Ambrose, Minister for the Status of Women, addressed the Commission on the Status of Women last month, but Canada is not among the 45 member states.

UN officials say agencies must take into account the principle of equitable regional representation when offering membership spots. But critics have long argued that a number of regional groups abuse that privilege by agreeing among themselves to offer only one candidate for any given position — as was the case with Iran's elevation to the Commission on the Status of Women.

"The UN has no intention of really cleaning house," said Bayefsky.

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