Iran’s illicit nuclear programme, including ballistic missile tests and proliferation activities, amount to ever further violations of that Security Council resolution.
Diplomats need to understand that putting Tehran in a leadership position at a committee charged with disarmament and security only undermines the legitimacy of its work, and casts a shadow upon the UN as a whole. It’s like asking the fox to guard the chickens.
Worryingly, the mullahs keep notching up one propaganda victory after another at the UN. In the past month alone, the regime was appointed Chair of the UN Human Rights Council’s Social Forum, which convenes in November, and elected a vice-president of the UN General Assembly.
How can the UN reward criminals who poison schoolgirls, blind protesters, fire on mourners, rape political prisoners, sponsor terrorism, and operate a global campaign to assassinate dissidents, authors and foreign officials who dare to oppose them? It’s obscene.
To date, however, only a handful have spoken out on these absurd elections, including the United States and Israel, Iranian diaspora groups, and activist and Lord of the Rings actress Nazanin Boniadi. I haven’t heard a single European state utter a word of objection.
For us at UN Watch, a human rights group in Geneva, we can't stop every such outrage: there are simply too many. But we are working now to overturn Iran’s appointment to the UN human rights position. Our petition has surpassed 80,000 signatures, and we will write to world leaders when it reaches 100,000.
In tandem, we have just submitted to the UN the text for a draft resolution to strip Tehran of its chairmanship. It requires a country to sponsor and introduce it.
We now call on all nations committed to upholding fundamental human rights and dignity to take the necessary action to show the Iranian people that they are not forgotten, and that these relentless UN insults to the victims of the barbaric Tehran regime will not be met with silence and complicity.
Hillel C. Neuer is executive director of UN Watch, an independent non-governmental human rights group in Geneva
