If you thought U.N. staff in Gaza assisting in the Hamas terror attack wasn’t a sufficient sign of ethics rot, how about this: Abdulaziz Alwasil, Saudi Arabia’s envoy to the UN, was elected as chair of the….wait for it!— Commission on the Status of Women. He ran unopposed at the group’s annual meeting in New York this week. None of the 45 members present at the meeting dissented when the representative of that paragon of women’s rights and feminism—you can see typical happy, liberated Saudi women enjoying their status in the enlightened nation above—was elevated to the two year post. The U.S. is not a member; it just hosts the meeting and pays for the lion’s share of all U.N. activities.
Sherine Tadros, the head of the New York office of Amnesty International, told the news media in response to the election that “Saudi Arabia’s own record on women’s rights is abysmal, and a far cry from the mandate of the commission.”
Gee, ya think?
Louis Charbonneau, UN director at the Human Rights Watch (HRW), said, “Saudi Arabia’s election as chair of the UN Commission on the Status of Women shows shocking disregard for women’s rights everywhere . A country that jails women simply because they advocate for their rights has no business being the face of the UN’s top forum for women’s rights and gender equality.”
Current Saudi law requires a woman to obtain permission from a male guardian to marry, and that’s in addition to barring them from driving and making them dress like Ninjas. Saudi husbands can refuse to financially support a wife if she refuses to have sex with him. In fact, a wife must obey her husband in all matters, provided his commands are “reasonable,” which means, I assume, that he can’t require her to dress like a chicken or a moose.
The United States should insist that this corrupt and virtually useless organization either reform or move out of New York City.
Ethics Alarms 
I would think the only recourse the US would have is stop contributing to it. Moreover, if the US or others are concerned about this election why didn’t the complainers put up a candidate to oppose him.
Sure, the election of this person is a joke, but it merely reflects the values of its members and thus the commission is a joke. For that reason alone we should not contribute to the farce and any country that does is approving of its decisions.
Is this the only example of the UN engaging in breathtaking hypocrisy?
Not exactly:
UN Human Rights Council PUTS ABUSERS IN GUARDIAN ROLE
MONEY QUOTE: China and its autocratic allies are using their majority on the United Nations Human Rights Council to shield each other from oversight. In 2023, only 30% of the countries on the Human Rights Council were classified as “free” by the US think tank Freedom House
PWS
The only thing the United Nations has been united about are nations that echew democracy. That piece of property on the eastside of Manhattan could easily be refrubished as a Trump Resort.
This is one of those moments that serves as a landmark in our lives–we remember where we were when we learned that JFK had been assassinated, or watched the first moon walk, or saw coverage of the fall of the Berlin Wall. And we remember where we were when we realized that the UN was never going to be the organization we hoped it might be.
For me, that was when, in 2012, Robert Mugabe was named the UN’s International Envoy for Tourism. If I might quote my own blog (again): “With this single, transcendent act of cataclysmic idiocy, the United Nations has definitively driven the last nail into its own coffin. I still yearn for an international organization wherein member states might be encouraged to discuss instead of invading, to negotiate instead of saber rattling, even to shout instead of launching air attacks. But this organization, the way it’s currently constituted: raze it, salt the earth, and start over somewhere else. It is officially, unequivocally, irrevocably, irrelevant.”
I fear I was late to the party, but at least I got there.
I’m old enough to remember the dramatic and inspiring scenes in the UN during the Cold War, and when Adlai Stevenson confronted the Soviet ambassador during the Cuban Missile Crisis demanding an answer (“I am prepared to sit here until Hell freezes over…”) I think I bailed on UN hope a bit earlier—when Iran chaired the human rights council, perhaps, or when the UN wouldn’t back punishing Iraq for violating terms of the cease fire because UN personnel were profiting from helping Saddam get around them.I’m not sure. But what a disappointment.
No organization is perfect, and there are always aberrations. But eventually, no matter how lofty the stated goals, no matter how much we want to believe that they’re at least trying to do the right thing, we have to acknowledge that the pattern is there.
For some reason, I felt the need to look up what I wrote about Lance Armstrong back in 2011…