As if the world needs another reason to ridicule the United Nations, news arrives that this useless international body elected Iran – a state renowned for all manner of human rights abuses in its notorious Evin Prison – to the UN Commission on the Status of Women on April 20, 2021.

Commission on Status of Women

Again by acclamation, the Council elected the following seven members for four-year terms beginning at the first meeting of the Commission’s sixty-seventh session in 2022 and expiring at the close of its seventieth session in 2026:  Cabo Verde, Egypt, Mauritania and Tunisia (African States); and Costa Rica, Panama and Trinidad and Tobago (Latin American and Caribbean States).  In one round of secret balloting, it elected China, Iran, Japan, Lebanon and Pakistan (Asia-Pacific States) to similar four-year terms.

“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.

I know some of you don’t believe me that the U.N. actually elected the Islamic Republic of Iran yesterday to its top women’s rights body, so here’s the video: https://t.co/43ckGoMrcR pic.twitter.com/zkuzME9R6N

— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) April 21, 2021

Though the ballot was secret, UN Watch determined at least four of the 15 EU and Western Group democracies on ECOSOC – which include Australia, Austria, Canada, Finland, France, Latvia, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States – voted for Iran.

Notably absent from any condemnation of this asinine appointment are Justin Trudeau, Canada’s feminist Prime Minister and Erin O’Toole, the feckless Leader of the Official Opposition.

I suppose since both would vote in favour of killing unborn baby girls, it would appear more than a little hypocritical if they opposed Iran’s election to the UN Commission on the Status of Women.  Or the answer might simply be that Canada voted in favour of placing Iran on this commission.

On April 12, Erin O’Toole unequivocally supported sex-selective abortion.

“As you know I’m pro-choice, and I will be voting against this private member’s bill. I will always as prime minister defend the rights — the human rights — of all Canadians to make this decision for themselves. I’ve been crystal clear on that and will be as prime minister.”

On April 14, Liberal Pam Damoff, speaking on behalf of Justin Trudeau and his Liberal government, said:

Let me start by saying that our government condemns all forms of gender-based violence. We have taken strong legislative action and made investments to protect women and girls since we took office, from improving judicial education to prohibiting discrimination based on gender identity and gender expression, investing in an ambitious gender-based violence strategy and, yes, approving the use of Mifegymiso in Canada.

There is no evidence to support the need for Bill C-233.

The United Nations has issued reports recommending against criminalizing any aspect of abortion, including sex-selective abortion, since research shows that doing so creates barriers to accessing abortion services, which negatively affects women’s equality.

Canada’s political hypocrisy aside, electing Iran to the UN Commission on the Status of Women is the moral equivalent of setting a rapist free inside a women’s prison, removing all the guards and shutting down all CCTV feeds, then being shocked when women are actually raped.

The rape analogy may offend some, but even the most cursory web search for ‘Iran women’s rights abuses‘ returns a plethora of cases where Iran’s government uses rape and threats of rape to force confessions from female detainees.

On September 2, 2020, Amnesty International announced a report detailing women being flogged, electro-shocked and sexually abused, then being denied medical care for the injuries they sustained at the hands of Iranian State Thugs in the wake of a series of protests in November 2019.

The report, Trampling humanity: Mass arrests, disappearances and torture since Iran’s 2019 November protests, documents the harrowing accounts of dozens of protesters, bystanders and others who were violently arrested, forcibly disappeared or held incommunicado, systemically denied access to their lawyers during interrogations, and repeatedly tortured to “confess”. They are among the 7,000 men, women and children arrested by the Iranian authorities within a matter of days during their brutal repression of the protests.

From the report:

A former detainee from Mashhad, Khorasan Razavi province, and a lawyer from Mariwan, Kurdistan province, also raised with the organization serious allegations of security and intelligence agents committing rape. However, given the psychological, social, legal and institutional barriers to reporting rape and the serious concerns around reprisal, Amnesty International was not able to speak to the alleged victims or their families directly to document the details of their cases independently.

The lawyer from Mariwan told Amnesty International that she had learned about three schoolboys – aged between 15 and 16 years old – who were allegedly sexually abused by agents from the intelligence unit of the Revolutionary Guards in November 2019 after being arrested in connection with their perceived
participation in the protests.

She said she was made aware of these incidents in November 2019 through a trusted source who had spoken to an acquaintance of the boys, but was unable to speak to the boys or their families directly due to strong security concerns.

According to information received by the lawyer, the abuse took place while the children were held in a detention centre belonging to the Revolutionary Guards in Mariwan, Kurdistan province, and allegedly involved rape through penetration of the anus with batons.

According to the lawyer’s source, the boys were detained for several days and, before being released on bail, their interrogators warned them not to tell anyone about their torture, including the instances of sexual abuse. The organization understands that the boys’ families have not filed complaints against the relevant security bodies out of fear of reprisals.

Threats were also widely used to induce fear and enforce obedience. In addition to threats of further torture including rape against the detainees, interrogators routinely threatened to arrest family members of detainees, including elderly parents, spouses or siblings, subject their loved ones to physical harm, rape or death, or have their children suspended from their educational institutions if they failed to “co-operate” and “confess”.

The United Nations continues to prove its irrelevance with these decisions. That Canada, whether actively or passively, supports this stupidity shows just how lost common sense truly is.