Canadian Hypocrisy at the United Nations

Canada’s misleading denial that it nominated Iran to UN body addressing women’s rights & terror prevention   UN Watch

 

"There have been incorrect reports on social media about Canada’s position on the nomination of Iran to the United Nations Economic and Social Council Committee for Programme and Coordination – an advisory body with no decision-making role. Iran was nominated as part of the Asia-Pacific Group."

"Canada is not a member of the group and did not endorse or vote for this nomination. There was no vote, as per established procedures."

"Canada does not support Iran for positions of influence within the United Nations. We will continue to actively work with partners to counter Iranian candidacies."

Global Affairs, Canada  

 

"Canada’s foreign ministry made a misleading statement on X.com to mask the fact it allowed the nomination of the Islamic Republic of Iran to a UN committee that addresses critical issues including women’s rights and terrorism prevention — failing to object as the US did, and as Canada and EU states have done in the past."

"The fact is that Canada, as a member of the 54-nation UN Economic and Social Council, participated in the consensus nomination of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the UN Committee for Programme and Coordination on April 8, 2026."

"This committee deals with budget priorities and program coordination on critical issues, and will meet soon, May 14-21, to address women’s rights, human rights, and terrorism prevention."

"At a minimum, Canada should have taken the floor to object that it is wrong to nominate a regime that only months ago massacred thousands of protesters, and that brutally oppresses women, tortures political prisoners, and systematically violates basic human rights."

"This is exactly what the United States did in that meeting. It was the only country that formally objected and disassociated itself from the consensus decision, citing Iran’s appalling record on women’s rights.

Canada and other Western democracies, however, remained silent and allowed the consensus to pass in ECOSOC, a body of which Canada is a member."

UN Watch

 

"The United States disassociates from consensus on the nomination of Iran to the Committee on Program and Co-ordination."

"The regime threatens its neighbours and has for decades infringed on the Iranian people's ability to exercise their basic human rights."

"Due to these and other concerns, we believe Iran is unfit to serve on a body advising member states on program and budgetary matters."

U.S. Ambassador Dan Negrea 

The Security Council chamber at the United Nation in New York City. Photo by Spencer Platt /Getty Images

 

Canada obligingly assisted  in the approval of a motion for the Islamic Republic of Iran -- that would be the Iranian regime that just a few months earlier responded to nation-wide protests against the regime by dispatching police, the IRGC and Basij to violently disband the protests by all and any means, leading to the killing of an estimated 30,000 Iranians and the arrests and death sentences of untold numbers of 'enemies of the Islamic Republic' -- to a position on the UN's Committee for Program and Coordination.

 

Iranian-Canadians who desperately wish for the Ayatollah-led, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-enforced Republic to fall, and yearn for the freedom from oppression that would mean for their families in Iran, would have reacted to the news of this incredible betrayal with disbelief. While at the same time, the infiltrated members of the regime and the IRGC that have made a home for themselves in Canada would have beamed with pleasure. Just as Hamas has on occasion congratulated the ruling Liberal government for some of its decisions, now the Iranian regime was given the same opportunity.

 

Officially, for internal consumption, the Liberal government of prime minister Mark Carney denied any such reports; that they did no such thing. The actual facts belie that assertion. Canada gave aid and comfort to a regime under the duress of a conflict brought by the State of Israel and the U.S. military launching an aerial war on the regime, its military, the IRGC, their weapons depots and rocket launchers and nuclear sites. While the Iranian regime presents a distinct danger with its nuclear ambitions and its sponsorship of terrorist groups to the world at large and the Middle East in particular, Canada's government calls for a ceasefire so the regime can survive.

 

Canada's decision at the April 8 meeting of the UN Economic and Social Council enables Iran to have an advisory and oversight role on programs as diverse as gender equality and terrorism prevention, as well as 'peaceful uses of outer space'. Global Affairs Canada's insistence that Canada's role in the event has been misunderstood, is an evasive and shameful tactic in a bid to shield the government from the shame and blame it most certainly deserves for betraying the most elemental foundations of human rights against tyrannical rule. 

 

Official video from the UN Economic and Social Council, most recently chaired by Bob Rae, Canada's ambassador to the UN, showed an official chairing a plenary session of the council where the Islamic Republic of Iran was included on a list of countries set to be appointed to a three-year term on the Committee for Program and Co-ordination. With no objections from the representatives of the assembled countries, the officiating individual bangs a gavel and declares: "It is so decided". 

 

And Canada helped in that decision; not a word of doubt expressed of the inappropriateness of a corrupt, terror-promoting, nation known for persecuting its own people -- much less its violence visited upon Iranian women who dare to oppose strictures placed upon their most basic of human rights -- sitting on such a committee from Canada.

 

Screenshot from a UN live stream showing the precise moment that a plenary session of the UN Economic and Social Council approved the nomination of the Islamic Republic of Iran to a UN oversight committee. Photo by UN

 

Move Over, Ladies, the Trans Community is Entitled

 

"I didn’t quite understand why that was uncomfortable because I didn’t know I was trans at the time. I still thought I was a guy. Finding a ladies' gym was something that seemed really exciting, and now that I’m out, I understand why I was uncomfortable at the other place.”

"[I was just] extremely devastated [by the experience and felt very uncomfortable in the past working out around] a bunch of really buff guys at the university gym."

"I got a call…basically saying, ‘Sorry, we made a mistake, you’re not actually allowed to be here, but you’re more than welcome to use the co-ed facility."

 "I just hung up, because I mean, I was extremely devastated, there’s really no other word for it."

"[A]ll it takes is education. Once you understand trans women are women, trans men are men, non-binary people are who they say they are, it’s as simple as that. If you still feel uncomfortable after that, that’s on you, it’s not on me. I am who I am, it’s as simple as that. I just look different. That’s all."

"It was important to me to be in a place that would be, like, explicitly accepting, like, 'You are a woman, you're allowed to be here'."

"One of the trainers greeted me, and she was extremely kind. She could tell I was trans right away and said I would be welcome there, and explicitly said I would be safe as well, even hugged me."

Transgender woman Brigid Klyne-Simpson 

Brigid Klyne-Simpson

"We already have transgender people here, and all sorts of people, we’re not discriminatory at all."

"We’ve got staff that’s minorities, so, we’re not saying there’s no solutions, we’re looking for a solution and we’re not discriminatory people."

"So now you pick the comfort of the male who identifies as a woman … and anybody can go in there saying, 'OK, I identify as a woman, and I want to be able to go in there.' And so, do we pick the comfort of the transgender person, who may not be as comfortable with the co-ed gym, but at least that's an alternative, or do we pick the comfort of the young girls working out there that might not feel comfortable?"

Dale Nagra, owner, Bodyworks Fitness, Parksville, Vancouver Island, British Columbia

Peculiar events have been occurring throughout Canada of late; a shop teacher at Oakville-Trafalgar High School showing up for classes in outrageously outsize breast prosthetics with protruding nipples, wearing tight, sheer tee-shirts and the controversy that erupted from that episode when the school board and the school principal refused to react to the provocation. High schools can exercise their authority in mandating an 'appropriate' dress code for students, yet doing so for teaching staff seemed just too frightfully interfering, with the threat of being denounced as 'transphobic' should the teacher be admonished at his/her unprofessionalism.

 

In an earlier case, a man identifying as a transwoman appealed to the B.C. Human Rights Commission when an aesthetician refused a Brazil wax job demanded. The Commission ruled against the complainant, stating that a man identifying as a woman who was equipped with male genitals could not expect a cosmetic service that the complainant, Jessica Yanik demanded as a paying client. "... human rights legislation does not require a service provider to wax a type of genitals they are not trained for and have not consented to wax."

Jessica Yaniv filed human rights complaints against a number of B.C. home salons, alleging she was discriminated against when they refused to provide waxing services.

 

In the latest social travesty transwoman Klyne-Simpson is offended that the gym in question has a policy of accepting trans clients, but has rules and regulations that maintain such clients not be permitted entry to sole-female areas of the gym, where privacy for female clients is a matter of discretion respecting their gender, not their chosen identity. Having been rebuffed, in his/her wish to join the born female gym clients, Klyne-Simpson is musing about taking the gym to the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal.

 

It would seem the Tribunal has a reputation of upholding many such complaints, encouraging British Columbians to file complaints where they are "denied services" related to "gender identity or expression". The B.C. Human Rights Code could serve to empower the Tribunal to order the Bodyworks gym to reverse its privacy-for-women policy and provide compensation to the complainant "for injury to dignity, feelings and self-respect".

 

"Trans people deserve to feel safe, welcome & affirmed for who they are. Trans women are women -- period", stated B.C. parliamentary secretary for gender equality, Kelli Paddon. Canada is the first jurisdiction in the world to commit to certifying transgender status through casual "self-identifiction".  In 2018, B.C. changed its rules so that residents could request birth certificates, driver's licences and other documents from the province to identify their gender with a nonbinary "X".

 

"Each individual knows their own gender best, and today, I am proud that our government is recognizing this by taking landmark action", Grace Lore, then-parliamentary secretary for gender equity, Grace Lore, announced in 2018. Now, any British Columbian over age 12 can legally change to any gender by simply submitting a three-page form known as the Application for Change of Gender Designation. 

 

Has no one noticed? Dignity and respect for self-identifying male-to-female transgender individuals, while unfortunately dignity and respect for women whose gender at birth was female, see theirs rapidly eroding, with born-males moving into their territory, invading their privacy and competing both for attention and recognition competing against women in the sports field. In asserting the legality of human rights in support of transwomen, the human rights of all women is abrogated.

Canada is home to some of the world’s first jurisdictions to certify transgender status through a lens of “self-identification.” Photo by Getty Images

Savaging Women's Human Rights in Afghanistan

Afghanistan's Taliban rulers have decreed that women should wear the all-covering burka in public and leave home only when necessary, a throwback to when the Taliban ruled the country between 1996 and 2001. (Shamil Zhumatov/Reuters)

"For all dignified Afghan women, wearing Hijab is necessary and the best Hijab is chadori [head-to-toe burka] which is part of our tradition and is respectful."

"If a woman is caught without a Hijab, her mahram [male guardian] will be warned."

"The second time, the guardian will be summoned and after repeated summons, her guardian will be imprisoned for three days."

Shir Mohammad, Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice

 

"This decision contradicts numerous assurances regarding respect for and protection of all Afghans’ human rights, including those of women and girls, that had been provided to the international community by Taliban representatives during discussions and negotiations over the past decade."

"The decision six weeks ago to postpone secondary schooling for Afghan girls was widely condemned internationally, regionally, and locally. Today’s decision by the Taliban might further strain engagement with the international community."

United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA)

 

A burqa-clad woman and a child walk past Taliban fighters along a roadside in Jalalabad, Afghanistan

It was expected, but it's still a shock to women in Afghanistan hoping that the return of the Taliban to government rule in their country abandoned by the West to the fundamentalist Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan whose leaders promised when they took power from the West-supported government in August of 2021 that Afghan women would not be shoved back to the Stone Age as they were in the Talibans' initial iteration when they ruled the country from 1996 to 2001.

 

It has now, after almost a year of rule, reneged on its promise and re-installed their original proscriptions against women appearing in public unless entirely covered but for their eyes, and in the company of a male family member. Music and dance are again disallowed. Women may no longer attend school, much less have employment outside of the home. All the stringent disallowals of the previous Taliban administration have been reintroduced.

 

This, in a country that is in a humanitarian crisis with over half the population facing malnutrition. International sanctions excluding the Taliban from major financial institutions have heavily impacted the collapsed economy. International investment dried up as soon as the Taliban returned to power. Afghan financial resources held overseas have been frozen rather than release them to the Taliban.

 

Afghan women and girls shout slogans demanding the reopening of high schools for girls during a demonstration in front of the Ministry of Education in Kabul, March 26, 2022  AFP

 

Afghanistan is once more back in the thrall of an oppressive, violent government, implementing -- as Afghan women suspected they would -- those same regressive and repressive laws targeting rights and freedoms of women. Segregation laws were brought to Herat decreeing women and men may no longer dine out in each other's company. Women must now remain at home unless it is absolutely necessary for them to venture forth at which time a male guardian must accompany them in public.

Parks are to be open to women exclusively on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, with men having exclusive use of the parks on the other four days of the week. Burkas have become the preferred coverings henceforth to obscure a woman completely from public scrutiny. Only eyes are to be exposed. The Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice is known to monitor the streets of the country looking out for any foolish enough to flout the law.

Disobedience to the new/old proscriptions will be viewed as a criminal offence. A far cry from the oleaginous statement for international consumption made by Zabiullah Mujahid when the Taliban spokesman said "our sisters, our men have the same rights" in an effort to reassure the world that the returned Taliban were now moderate and civil. It took little time however, before women were banned from working and girls prohibited from attending school beyond Grade 6.

"[Pre-Taliban Afghanistan was] a thriving cultural environment [with 3.6 million girls in school and a quarter of the seats in Parliament held by women]."

"I very much hope that very shortly we'll be able to agree on a product that expresses our collective agreement and concern about these latest developments."

Barbara Woodward, British UN Ambassador to the United Nations

Blundering to a Badge of Honour

"Any further step from the Canadian side in that direction [expressing dissatisfaction with Saudi internal affairs linked to abusive human rights actions] will be considered as acknowledgement of our right to interfere in Canadian domestic affairs."
"Canada and all other nations need to know that they can't claim to be more concerned than the kingdom over its own citizens."
"[Canada's criticism of the arrests of Nassima al-Sada and Samar Badawi, both prominent female Saudi activists represent] blatant interference in the kingdom's domestic affairs, against basic international norms and all international protocols [and a] major, unacceptable affront to the kingdom's laws and judicial process, as well as a violation of the kingdom's sovereignty."
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Foreign Ministry

"[I am] very alarmed [over news of the arrest of imprisoned Raif Badawi's sister's arrest, and that the government of Canada would] continue to strongly call for the release of both Raif [Badawi] and Samar Badawi."
"We will always speak up for human rights, we will always speak up for women's rights around the world."
"The most important thing for us is the life and the living conditions of activists. A host of Canadian civil society has been speaking up for her [Canadian citizen Ensaf Haidar, wife of Raif Badawi]."
"It's something that we do. We stand up for Canadians and their families around the world."
Chrystia Freeland, Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs

Isn't Canada wonderful? Wasn't it just several years ago that Canada refused to pay a ransom to secure the lives of two Canadians held by a radical Islamist group in the Philippines? Um, well, they were men, so they obviously didn't qualify for rescue and support from their government. Which is, of course, beside the point; we're discussing the issue of diplomatic pressure put to good use, quietly and effectively, between two countries in discreet discussions that would persuade one to exercise some goodwill at the behest of another with which it has trade and other ties, to release a political prisoner, to reunite him with his wife and three children in Canada.

That is the issue. And that will likely no longer be possible. Admittedly, there is little doubt that Canada has attempted diplomatic-political pressure to achieve the release of Saudi blogger Raif Badawi, and it has not yet yielded results. So try a little harder. There is potential leverage in appealing to the better nature of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salmon since he has been very busy portraying himself as a newborn champion of human rights with the intention of relaxing Saudi rules and regulations restraining women in the nation's public life.

Ensaf Haidar, wife of blogger Raif Badawi, takes part in a rally for his freedom in Montreal, on Jan. 13, 2015.  Globe and Mail Update

Honey works better than vinegar, and vinegar has just been poured on the relations of a very touchy-testy country. The simple fact is, if Canada is interested in criticizing Saudi Arabia there is ample reason to do so. And to do so for a far more potent reason, that of holding it to account for its responsibility in fomenting fundamental Salafist extremism by investing billions in mosques and religious schools around the world that have churned out terrorist jihadis. Want to confront the Saudi kingdom? Hold it accountable for the the 15 of the 17 infamously deadly 9-11 plane highjackers that were Saudi citizens, incited to their unspeakable conspiracy of mass murder by Saudi religious imperatives.

The world community and its leaders deplore the compulsive tweeting of the U.S. president whose inane, truly mind-boggling thoughts continue to astonish those who follow his daily exploits of unsettling the world order and setting other world leaders on edge. Justin Trudeau proved himself fully capable of exercising his options to foolishly and sanctimoniously welcome the oppressed and the downtrodden of the world that Donald J. Trump had promised he meant to extirpate from the United States with their illegal, undocumented status, an affront to American sovereignty. Canada would compassionately take them all, tweeted Trudeau.

And so, Canada now struggles with that fallout, with migrants flooding across the border from the U.S. into Canada illegally, to declare themselves refugees, in their search for an improved future prospect in opportunities denied them in their countries of birth; not the definition of refugee, but that of economic migrants resorting to breaking Canadian law in their entitled search for economic haven.
And now Canada's Minister of Foreign Affairs has demonstrated that she too is not immune to itchy thumbs persuading her to virtue-signal that Canada will not stand by and do nothing while Saudi women are denied their human rights.

Saudi Ali al-Nimr at age 16 four years ago, convicted of participating in protests and sentenced to death, facing execution, crucifixion

This is not diplomacy, this is grand-standing, and neither Trudeau nor Freeland had the wit to look ahead to ponder the cat whose tail they were pulling. The country whose Sharia law punishes political dissenters as criminals and where free speech is a Western concept and where dedication to ensuring that women dress like crows, unseen, unheard in public lest they turn men's thoughts to carnal evil and whose penal system includes the capital punishment of medieval public beheading and crucifixion has no trouble finding trading partners in the West. And Canada has been involved in lucrative trade deals with Saudi Arabia. Anticipating how those trade deals will also lead to investment.

"The country's efforts to diversify its economy is driving opportunities for Canadians in many sectors."
"Business opportunities exist across a wide range of sectors that match Canadian capabilities."
Export Development Canada

"It would appear that Canada continues to view Saudi Arabia with an outdated ideological lens."
"The current Canadian trade playbook is clearly not working, and Ottawa's foreign policy and engagement strategy in Saudi Arabia has backfired."
Omar Allam, former diplomat, CEO Allam Advisory Group trade consultancy

As Saudi Arabia undergoes a gradual change led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, toward social modernization and reform, social restrictions are being lifted and the "religious police" being defanged from imposing their strict moral codes even while clerics and prominent business executives and women's rights advocates are being arrested. This is a country for whom clearly charges of human rights abuses are a touchy subject, a country within which no tolerance exists for political expression opposing the government. It is also Canada's second-largest export market in the Gulf region.


Canada will now be relieved of the expectation that its $15-billion military vehicles sale to Saudi which has always been controversial, will proceed, much less other Canadian exports to the kingdom, at a time when the Trudeau government has made a total hash of other free trade agreements while it is sweating bullets over the lack of NAFTA progress with its largest by far global trading partner and neighbour. Things are not looking particularly good for Canada's future economy at this point. The cold anger that has resulted from Chrystia Freeland's misrepresented support for the Badawi family will do that family no good; they have been consigned, thanks to Canada, to continued oppression.

Screen grab of a tweet posted by the account @Infographic_KSA, which has since been shut down.
@Infographic_KSA / Twitter

And Saudi Arabia -- Wahhabist central -- whose ideological psychosis spawned al-Qaeda and 9-11? Well, a semi-official youth group posted a message for Canada on @infographic_ksa over an image that shows the skyline of Toronto and a plane flying toward it with the message "He who interferes with what doesn't concern him finds what doesn't please him", alongside an old Arab message whose text reads: "sticking one's nose where it doesn't belong!".

So Canada's ambassador to Saudi Arabia has been summarily dismissed by the Saudi government -- expelled with the rest of his staff and it's anyone's guess for how long, while all new trade and investment deals with Saudi Arabia have been halted, all Saudi scholarship students attending universities in Canada recalled, and that does indeed "gravely concern" Canada which has responded via Foreign Affairs that it has no plans to reciprocate and expel the Saudi ambassador and staff from Canada, which is really and truly a great pity, since the embassy occupies prime Canadian real estate and it would be very nice to reclaim it.

The Saudi Arabian Embassy is shown in Ottawa, Canada, on Sunday, Aug. 5, 2018. Saudi Arabia has ordered Canadian Ambassador Dennis Horak to leave the ultraconservative kingdom within 24 hours after his nation criticized the recent arrests of women's rights activists. The Saudi Foreign Ministry also said it would freeze "all new business" between the kingdom and Canada. (David Kawai/The Canadian Press via AP)

Refugee Liberation

"In Syria, because of the family and social pressures, I submitted to him. But here [in a Lebanon-based refugee camp supervised by international humanitarian groups], the circumstances we've passed through made me stronger. Here, I feel independent."
"He was behaving like he was God, controlling my life. And when I took this decision, that's the first point I started feeling independent from him."
Samar Hijazi, Bekaa Valley village

"This is against God's will."
"If you divorce, you'll have problems with your children. God will be against you. God won't bless you. Will you reconsider?"
Sunni Sharia court judge

Samar Hijazi, a Syrian refugee in Lebanon, greets her grandson Hamza on Oct. 22, 2016, as she returns to the Bekaa Valley camp where she lives after a judge granted her a divorce.
Kristen Chick for The Washington Post

Samar Hijazi was firm in responding with a resounding "no". And all it took was the judge's pronouncement that she was summarily divorced to free her from a 33-year marriage. She was all of twelve years old when she was married to a man who would domineeringly control every aspect of her life for the following 33 years. Immediately upon her marriage she gave birth in swift succession to six children. Just as she was under her husband's thumb, so were the children.

She is now 45 years of age, and for the first time since age twelve responsible for herself. Her home is now a tidy, tiny prefabricated structure within a dusty refugee camp where she has a small bed along one wall, her clothing and suitcases neatly placed on shelves, and little else. But it's her home and hers alone, and it is where she is confident and comfortable. She now has grandchildren of her own, and she hopes their lives will be far different than her own.

While the Syrian conflict has created millions of displaced Sunni Syrians within the country, an estimated seven million more have become refugees finding shelter outside Syria. They chose to leave Syria because they could no longer live under threatening intimidation, regime bombing and the fear that the next barrel bomb or chemical bomb attack would end their lives and those of their families. This woman insisted that her family leave their home in a suburb of Damascus.

She had mustered enough strength of purpose and conviction to feel that death awaited her and her family, remaining in Syria. She had lived for 33 years under the brutal domination of her husband who beat her and her children and never would give her permission to exit their home if he did not accompany her. Early in the marriage she had tried to escape by running back to her parents. Who then turned her back over to her husband.

The war that created such a massive upheaval that one-half of the entire Syrian population became homeless -- and Europe was invaded by masses of Syrians desperate, along with migrants from Libya and North Africa, hoping to escape poverty, sectarian conflicts and degraded life conditions of oppression that offered no economic stability -- created as well the opportunity for this woman and others like her, influenced by the support given them by humanitarian agency workers to shed their traditional custom of submitting to male coersion.

The degree of personal autonomy they have gained since leaving Syria as a matter of existential duress has had the effect of increasing their quality of life. Not in the area of personal possessions, certainly, but in personal development, happily taking on the responsibilities that were before denied them, with the familiar social constraints shoved aside through their exposure to the promotion of women's rights thanks to the aid groups' influence.

Virulently Pathological Iran, As Paragon Of Virtue

The existing laws in my country do not allow me as a woman to walk in public without wearing the veil; I, as a woman, do not even have the freedom to choose my own dress. The laws of the Islamic Republic of Iran do not allow me to travel or get an education without the permission of my husband. I cannot even get married without the permission of my father."
"The laws in my country do not allow women to sing solo as our voice allegedly runs the risk of provoking men. Under laws of the Islamic Republic, my share of inheritance is half of that of my male relatives. Under the laws of the Islamic Republic, just last year more than 18,000 women ended up in court for being ‘badly veiled.’ UN Women was created by the United Nations as a body for gender equality and for the empowerment of women. If so, isn’t it an insult to women to give the leadership role to those governments that oppress their own women?"
Masih Alinejad, Iranian journalist

Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, an agency whose purpose is to alert the world community of occurrences that run counter to the purpose of the United Nations, but which become an integral part of UN activities which render the organization a mouthpiece of human rights abusers has issued another alert. He has most recently issued a condemnation of the UN for the election of Iran to the top post of a UN arm in support of women's rights, UN Women.

As Mr. Neuer put it in writing letters of protest to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and EU High Representative Federica Mogherini, it is their moral responsibility to at the very least speak with sincere regret that yet another occasion has arisen where a UN arm has been hijacked by a corrupt organizational operation enabling Iran, one of the world's most abusive countries, one that sponsors terrorism, promotes instability internationally, foments hatred, and aspires to nuclear weapons, to take up an important post for women's rights.

It is a despicable act of ultimate cynicism that members of a UN body would see fit to elevate the Islamic Republic of Iran to such a body "which sends absolutely the worst message to Iran's women's rights defenders, and to the world, concerning Iran's dismal record on child marriages, forced head-coverings, domestic violence and gender inequality", wrote Mr. Neuer. Yet the reality now is that the UN agency tasked with supporting female equality and empowerment has been made a mockery of.

"By elevating Iran to a global leadership post on women’s equality, the UN is legitimizing a regime that systematically treats women as second-class citizens. Iran is considered one of the worst countries in the world on women’s rights, ranking 137th out of 142 countries in the latest Global Gender Gap Index of the World Economic Forum", he pointed out. This kind of outright moral fraud is common enough within the United Nations and its various human rights arms.

Countries known for the dismal level of their human rights abuses, their corruption, their commitment to inequality find themselves elevated to posts whose purpose is to single out member states whose performance on all these vital human rights indices is hopelessly backward. Yet these countries and their dreadful human rights records proliferate in the UN, which has a habit of tippy-toeing around the most egregious abuses, and certainly avoiding 'naming-and-shaming', so the result is the abusing countries nominate and elevate those most like them to these sensitive positions.

"Time and again, Iran shows contempt to the founding purpose of UN Women, and should never have been elected to its board. The UN’s election of Iran by an overwhelming two-thirds majority is a moral outrage that threatens to undermine the UN Secretary-General’s own report on Iran’s pervasive discrimination against women", wrote Mr. Neuer. Iran won 36 out of a possible 54 votes from the UN Economic and Social Council.

The countries with the absolute most afflicted and afflicting records in all the positive areas of human development, interaction, equality and basic human rights, like many other human-rights-abusing countries that are members of the United Nations are able to thumb their noses at veracity and honour, courage and human rights as they flagrantly conduct themselves in violation of all those virtues, while sanctimoniously claim to be upholding the very values that make us decent human beings.

Marginalizing Palestinian Women

"With the political split [Palestinian Fatah and Hamas], you don't have anyone in the Gaza Strip aiming to criminalize these offences [honour killings] or even to send an ethical, moral message -- even if it is not put into effect. There is a complete silence from [Hamas] government institutions. It is very much connected to law and order -- how people perceive the strength of duty-bearers and how they would feel about being punished or getting away with a crime."
Hiba Zayyan, United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women

The number of so-called 'honour killings' in Palestine doubled in 2013 from the previous year [Reuters]

Israel's deleterious effect on Palestinian women is often cited as the reason why they suffer in Palestinian society. The separation of families after 1948's declaration of Israel as a state, with its attendant flight of Palestinians from Israel as combined Arab armies attacked the Jewish State to eliminate it, promising the Palestinians they would be able to speedily return; the separation wall protecting Israel from terrorist attacks by Palestinians, the responsive incursions by the IDF into Gaza to stop Hamas from lobbing rockets across the border.

Israel is held to be at fault, despite that all of its actions are in response to violent events that both Fatah and Hamas inflicted upon Israel and its citizens. In an effort to put a halt to the atrocities the dividing wall was built to protect Israeli citizens. Israel's dispatch of its armed forces into Gaza periodically is done for the purpose of stopping rocket attacks raining down on Israeli towns close to the Gaza border; the destruction of homes and businesses in Gaza can be attributed to Hamas goading Israel and using its Palestinian population as shields. First causes....

The official daily paper of the Palestinian Authority, Al Hayat al-Jadida which is published in Ramallah speaks of the position of Palestinian women in the West Bank and in Gaza, providing an insight into how women can expect to fare in any future Palestinian state. Half of those Palestinian women, according to the newspaper, have been exposed to domestic violence. A senior official in the PA Ministry of Women's Affairs reported in 2014 a 100 percent increase in "family honour" killings.

Zainab Al-Ghneimi, who manages the Women's Legal Counselling Centre speaks of this as a product of the Palestinian society's culture, inclusive of both the West Bank and Gaza. She believes a Palestinian husband claims the right of ownership over his wife, as his wife's guardian, leaving him free to command and forbid. Violent husbands follow custom, not Islamic doctrine, she insists, as no religious text encourages such violence against women.

It is, however, popularly taken for religiously-inspired doctrine. The typical Palestinian man considers that he has bought the woman he is partnered with and paid for, to become his property and who must obey his orders. Women themselves accept violence as their just due; a cultural construct taken as divinely ordained. Four of ten women agree violence is justified when a woman leaves home failing to inform her husband. Three-fourths of women feel violence to be justified if children are neglected by the wife.

Palestinian laws, according to Palestinian Media Watch, an independent online service, have been interpreted to permit violence against women, and Mahmoud Abbas has faced criticism by women's rights groups for his failure to revise legislation making it unlawful. Al-Hayat al-Jadida ran a headline: "Violence Against women in Gaza: The undermining of family life", an article claiming that in Gaza, violence against women increased in the post 2014 50-day struggle with Israel.

Poverty, according to the Palestinian Centre for Democracy and Conflict Resolution in Gaza, is the reason for this increase in violence against women as men become stressed and angry when they are unable to support their families who live in crowded conditions with little privacy. "There has also been a reversal in gender roles where women accept low-paying jobs which men consider below their status as the head of families. This has all fed into men's feelings of inadequacy and to them taking their frustrations out on their female relatives."

Khaled Abu Toameh, an Israeli Arab reporter whose articles often appear in the online Gatestone Institute, and who writes for the Jerusalem Post, has an account explaining how women are treated in Gaza where Hamas imposed strict rules after taking control of Gaza in 2007. Women must wear veils in offices and on college campuses. They may not walk in public other than with a male relative. They are not permitted to smoke in a cafe, are not allowed to use hairdressing salons owned by men. Shades of Wahaabist Saudi Arabia...!

They are granted absolute freedom, however, if they sign up for combat. Women are being recruited for military training with the Nasser Eddin Brigades, a terrorist militia. The 40 Palestinian women who have so far graduated from military training camps have been granted the especial privilege of the company of men who are not close relatives. Another equal number of female combatants are undergoing training.

The UN commission on the Status of Women whose goal is to "promote gender equality and the empowerment of women", incidentally last month passed one political resolution, just one. It was sponsored by Palestine and by South Africa. Israel, it declared, is responsible for unequal treatment of women, yet another declaration by yet another UN agency that Israel is guilty of violations of human rights.