The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) has ignited a wave of indignation with its recent announcement that two of its seven newly elected advisory committee experts hail from Iran and China.
This decision has been met with widespread criticism, given the notorious human rights records of both nations.
Hillel Neuer, Executive Director of UN Watch, expressed his dismay to Fox News Digital, stating, "The U.N. elected Beijings and Tehrans loyal agents as human rights expertswithout a ballot, without shame. These regimes persecute minorities, jail anyone who speaks freely, and rule through fear and censorship."
Neuer further lamented the irony of the situation, saying, "The committee that once drafted the U.N.s anti-racism convention has now been captured by those who embody racism, repression, and the silencing of truth. Its an inversion of human rightsand a stain on the United Nations itself."
The United Nations Secretary General and the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights have yet to respond to Fox News' Digital press inquiries. This silence comes in the wake of the Trump administration's decision to withdraw the United States from the council in February. President Donald Trump warned at the time, "They're going to end up losing their credibility like other organizations, and then they're going to be nothing."
Orde Kittrie, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, echoed these sentiments in his conversation with Fox News Digital. He described the election of Chinas Ren Yisheng and Irans Afsaneh Nadipour to the UNHRC advisory committee as "a disgraceful indication of the extent to which the UNHRC has become a mechanism not for promoting global human rights but rather for distracting the worlds attention from the worlds worst human rights abusers."
Kittrie further criticized Yisheng, a career Chinese diplomat, for his defense of Chinas egregious human rights violations, particularly against the people of Xinjiang and Tibet. He cited the Freedom House's rating of China as having among the lowest scores for political rights and civil liberties worldwide. He stated, "One need only read the US State Departments 2024 human rights report on China to realize that naming a Chinese official to a human rights advisory committee is analogous to putting a wolf in charge of a hen house."
Kittrie also referenced the report's opening statement, which notes that [g]enocide and crimes against humanity occurred during the year in China against predominantly Muslim Uyghurs and members of other ethnic and religious minority groups in Xinjiang."
Lawdan Bazargan, a renowned Iranian-American human rights activist, who was once incarcerated in Tehrans infamous Evin penitentiary for political dissent, expressed her concerns about Iran's representative, Nadipour. She wrote, "Nadipour is no defender of rights: During the Women, Life, Freedom uprising, she dismissed global support for Iranian women as politically motivated, siding with the regimes crackdown."
Bazargan also revealed that during Nadipour's tenure as Irans ambassador in Denmark, her embassy pressured Iranian women to accept cleric-imposed divorce terms, even threatening loss of child custody. She added, "She has served a regime that forces hijab, allows child marriage, and imprisons womens rights activists."
The Islamic Republic of Iran has been classified as a leading state-sponsor of terrorism by the U.S. government under both Democratic and Republican administrations. Numerous reports have also been issued about the widespread human rights violations in the nation.
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