CNSNews.com Iran Drops Bid for Human Rights Council Seat, Eyes Women’s Rights Body Instead

by Anne Bayefsky

Iran has confirmed it will no longer run for a seat on the Geneva-based U.N. Human Rights Council. Instead, it aims to become a member of an international women's rights body.

Iran's bid to win one of four HRC seats earmarked for Asia had drawn strong opposition from rights campaigners already critical of the presence of countries with poor rights records - including China, Cuba and Saudi Arabia - on the 47-member body.

Iran's withdrawal means that the remaining candidates for the four Asia seats - Qatar, Malaysia, Thailand and the Maldives - are all but assured of success when the full 192-member U.N. General Assembly on May 13 elects 14 HRC members.

Iran made the decision to end its candidature after discussions with other members of the U.N.'s Asia group, Tehran's foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said Sunday.

Hinting at a quid pro quo, he said that Iran would instead be a candidate for an international women's rights body - "and all Asian countries will support our membership."

It was not immediately clear which body he meant. Iran's ILNA news agency quoted Mehmanparast as saying the "Women's Human Rights Council" while IRNA quoted him as saying the "International Commission for Protection of Women's Rights."

There are two main U.N. bodies relating to women's rights. The 23-member Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) holds elections in June for 11 vacancies, but the nomination list closed in March and Iran is not on it. The 45-member Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) will have two Asia seat vacancies early next year, when Pakistan's and Cambodia's terms end.

Whatever the case, the prospect that Iran - with the support of other Asian states - will take a seat on a body charged with promoting the rights of women is certain to stoke controversy.

"Putting fundamentalist Iran in charge of a women's rights commission is like putting a pyromaniac as chief of the fire department," Hillel Neuer, director of the Geneva-based U.N. Watch, said late Sunday. "It's an outrage, and completely unacceptable."

Among the reasons Iranian and other human rights advocates gave for urging governments to block Iran's HRC candidacy was its treatment of women.

In a letter to U.N. member states last week one of Iran's most prominent rights advocates, the exiled Nobel peace prize laureate Shirin Ebadi, urged them to reject the candidacy of a country "which has been violating human rights for years."

Ebadi gave examples of discrimination faced by Iranian women, including the fact that "blood money" - the prescribed amount paid to the heirs of a murder victim - for a woman is half the sum of that for a man.

"The testimony of two women is equivalent to the testimony of one man," she wrote. "A man is permitted to have four wives and divorce any of them without giving any reasons."

Ebadi said that women in Iran who seek equal rights are charged with conspiring to overthrow the Islamic Republic. More than 100 such women currently faced criminal charges.

Another letter sent to U.N. members last week urging them to block Iran's HRC bid came from 12 top Iranian human rights activists, who said women in the country were treated as "second class citizens."

The State Department's most recent international human rights report, released last month, noted that Iranian women face discrimination even in the administration of some of the most controversial shari'a punishments, such as stoning for adultery.

"The law provides that a victim of stoning is allowed to go free if he or she escapes," the report said. "It is much harder for women to escape, as they are buried to their necks, whereas men are buried only to their waists."

'With or without Iran, council lacks credibility'

Iran's withdrawal from next month's HRC election followed behind-the-scenes lobbying by the U.S. and other Western members.

The decision drew widespread praise from human rights advocates and others, and U.S. officials characterized it as a sign the council was moving in the right direction.

Anne Bayefsky, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and editor of Eye on the U.N., disagreed that the development showed the HRC was becoming a serious agency for promoting human rights.

"At the last council session, no resolution on Iran's abysmal human rights record was even presented let alone adopted," she said Sunday. "There has never been any special session of the council on Iran, though the events of last June's election and subsequent crackdown cried out for serious attention."

Bayefsky recalled that when Iran went through the council's "universal periodic review" mechanism earlier this year the process "ended with a round of applause for Iran."

"So the fact that Iran is not a member of the council has not made the slightest difference to the council's total unwillingness to do anything about human rights in Iran."

Noting the presence on the council of "countries with some of the worst human rights situations on the planet" - such as Saudi Arabia, China, Cuba and Russia - Bayefsky said that "adding or subtracting Iranian membership is hardly determinative of the council's credibility."

'What about Libya?'

The last time Tehran stood for a seat on the HRC was 2006, when the council was established to replace the U.N. Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR). Iran was one of 18 countries competing for 13 Asian seats and got the second lowest number of votes, with only Iraq doing worse.

Since that first election, the amount of competition for seats has fallen sharply.

Barring any last minute entries, on May 13 neither Asia nor any of the other geographical groups - Africa, Eastern Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, and the Western group - will offer any contest. All have "closed slates" - the same number of candidates as there are available seats.

Human rights organizations have argued that a lack of competition has helped violators to get seats.

Neuer of U.N. Watch drew attention Sunday to the likelihood of Libya winning a seat next month.

Although an official U.N. list of candidates does not currently include any African country, diplomats say Libya is one of four African candidates for four available African seats.

"Libya persecutes its two million black African migrants, for which it has been denounced by the U.N. itself," Neuer said. He also cited the torture of a Palestinian doctor and Bulgarian nurses accused of deliberately infecting Libyan children with the HIV virus, and Libya's incarceration of a Swiss businessman after Muammar Gaddafi's son was arrested in 2008 and accused of assaulting personal staff at a Geneva hotel.

Neuer drew a contrast between Western opposition to Iran's HRC bid and Libya's.

"Western states are doing nothing about this because they now buy Libyan oil, and because Gaddafi has for now sworn off terrorism, and is in a kind of post-rogue recovery program," he said.

"Western states who are on the council know that Libya will be elected, and fear the impact this could have on the perceived credibility of the council. "Regrettably, they have more fear about the PR consequences - how the people will view what the foreign policy elites are doing in Geneva - than they do of the actual damage that Libya's presence on the council will cause," Neuer added.

Libya was not only a member of the now defunct UNCHR, but in 2003 it was nominated by the African group to chair that body.

The Bush administration opposed the move and for the first time in the commission's history, the U.S. forced a vote, breaking with the tradition of filling the chairmanship "by acclamation."

Libya won by 33 votes to three (it was a secret ballot, but the three votes were understood to have come from the U.S., Canada and Guatemala). Another 17 UNCHR members - including European Union nations - abstained.

Anne Bayefsky, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and editor of Eye on the U.N., disagreed that the development showed the HRC was becoming a serious agency for promoting human rights.

"At the last council session, no resolution on Iran's abysmal human rights record was even presented let alone adopted," she said Sunday. "There has never been any special session of the council on Iran, though the events of last June's election and subsequent crackdown cried out for serious attention."

Bayefsky recalled that when Iran went through the council's "universal periodic review" mechanism earlier this year the process "ended with a round of applause for Iran."

"So the fact that Iran is not a member of the council has not made the slightest difference to the council's total unwillingness to do anything about human rights in Iran."

Noting the presence on the council of "countries with some of the worst human rights situations on the planet" - such as Saudi Arabia, China, Cuba and Russia - Bayefsky said that "adding or subtracting Iranian membership is hardly determinative of the council's credibility."


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FOUL PLAY AT THE NEW ISRAEL FUND

by Ben Dror Yemini

Ma'ariv

The New Israel Fund is angry. It thinks that it is correct to disseminate false testimony about the State of Israel. It thinks that it is okay to take part in the demonization campaign that is being staged by organizations whose goal is the elimination of Israel. It thinks that it is okay to cooperate with the Goldstone commission, even though it was formed by an automatic majority of the benighted countries that control the UN Human Rights Council. It thinks that it is okay that Israel cooperate with the commission, even though there is no country in the free world that supported the committee’s formation. And it is absolutely legitimate, in a democratic country, to do all these things.

But there is another thing that is also legitimate to do: to reveal the truth about the fund and the organizations that falsely claim the title of being “human rights” organizations. If most of the political organizations supported by the fund do not recognize the right of the State of Israel to exist as a Jewish and democratic state-don’t cry human rights. Say the truth: the denial of rights to Jews only. The Palestinians have a right to a nation state in a state of their own, as do the Croats and the Hungarians and the Czechs and the Slovaks and other nations-but not the Jews.

The New Israel Fund supports, for example, the Zochrot organization. This is a non-profit organization that strives, avowedly and openly, to destroy the State of Israel by means of exercising the “right of return.” Not that there is any such right, and not that there ever was another precedent for a mass “return” after a population swap in the wake of wars-but this does not bother the New Israel Fund. It will always jump in under the slogan of “human rights.”

All this doesn’t mean that Israel is exempt from criticism. After all, out of the hundreds of allegations, there are a few of substance. But if many sane people loathe the human rights organizations, it’s not because they loathe human rights. Just the opposite. It’s because the sane majority is fed up with human rights becoming the weapon of benighted forces. It’s because the New Israel Fund has turned itself into another organization, one of many in the world, which are party to this global deception. There are a million and one offenses to human lives and human rights in the world. Israel, as a state in conflict, offends less than all others. This has been checked. This is backed up in numbers. But it is the one taking the brunt of the criticism. This is called demonization, delegitimization and obsession. This is not defense of human rights but, rather, an orchestrated campaign in the service of Iran and Hamas. This is not the intent of the fund. But it is the result.

We should call things by their real names. The majority of the organizations supported by the New Israel Fund work to delegitimize Israel. But the fund rolls its eyes heavenward and whines: what’s wrong with human rights? There is nothing wrong. What’s wrong are those who strive clearly to deny the Jews’ right to exist in the only place where they have sovereignty, to turn Israel into a “country of all its citizens” in which the majority will be Hamas supporters. It is wrong when someone wants to commit politicide against only one other people in the world. It is wrong when someone cooperates with the forces of evil and tries to sell the lie that this is “human rights.”

How is it that many, mainly Jews, support this fund? How is it that they enable this systematic campaign that pretends to be humane, and in practice is demonic? They are not anti-Semites. They are people with good intentions. After all, the rhetoric is about human rights and minorities. Jews are sensitive to that. And it’s good that they are. Most of them simply don’t know. Most of the sincerely and truly want for Israel to be more enlightened and more advanced, while being stricter about human lives and human rights. But they do not know that the money goes to other goals. Even Prof. Naomi Chazan, who heads the fun, is not a hater of Israel. But what happened to them is exactly what has happened to innumerable organizations that deal with the “discourse of rights.” Ultimately, they serve the agenda of Iran and Hamas.

Human rights organizations can earn back the trust in them. They must support human rights, not organizations that work to deny Israel’s right to exist. In the meantime, these organizations, and this includes the New Israel Fund, are not only Israel’s great enemy, but also that of the free world and of human rights.