UN Commission on the Status of Women Gives Iran Seat

The UN has just given Iran a seat on the 45-nation Commission on the Status of Women.  This commission's purpose is to promote gender equality and the advancement of women.  Iran is a nation which still stones women for infidelity and lashes them for what they call immodest dress.  A group of Iranian activists opposed Iran being given this seat saying that

women lack the ability to choose their husbands, have no independent right to education after marriage, no right to divorce, no right to child custody, have no protection from violent treatment in public spaces, are restricted by quotas for women's admission at universities, and are arrested, beaten, and imprisoned for peacefully seeking change of such law

 An op-ed published on-line by Foreign Policy Magazine notes that

In the past year, it [Iran] has arrested and jailed mothers of peaceful civil rights protesters.

It has charged women who were seeking equality in the social sphere — as wives, daughters and mothers — with threatening national security, subjecting many to hours of harrowing interrogation. Its prison guards have beaten, tortured, sexually assaulted and raped female and male civil rights protesters.

As you will recall, Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi, a cleric much respected by the Iranian government, recently said

Many women who do not dress modestly ... lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which (consequently) increases earthquakes.

As is the case with the Human Rights Commission of the UN, the Commission on the Status of Women is dominated already by nations which are not very strong on human and women's rights.  The U.S., Japan, and Germany are among those presently on the Commission which support women's rights, but those nations are a minority. The number of seats on the commission is apportioned by region and by the number of countries in a region.  Regions with more small countries get more seats.  Africa has 13 seats, Asia has 11, Latin America and the Caribbean have 9 seats, Western Europe and North America have 8 seats, and Eastern Europe has 4 seats.  Two seats from Asia were open and only Thailand and Iran offered candidates to fill them after backroom deals among the Asian countries decided upon those two nations.

Despite the Iranian activist petition that Iran be denied a seat and the well-known abuses of women in Iran, the U.S. did not openly oppose Iran getting a seat on the commission.  Apparently, Obama and his comrades in the administration and the Democrat Congress are too busy trying to eliminate American exceptionalism and the rule of law in the U.S. in order to make us more like the rest of the world.  They do not have the time to stand up for the equality of women.  After all, that is one of the things that makes us less like most of the rest of the world.