Just when you thought the UN and its various councils and committees couldn't get any worse--pow!--they take an action or two to prove their worthlessness, nay, danger to humanity.
Iran is under sanctions because of its development of nuclear weapons. So who does the UN elect to a top post at the UN Arms Trade Treaty Conference now underway and continuing until nearly the end of July? Iran! Of course. But...for some reason this, and the other countries selected are not listed on the conference's website or summary; the information is available only from the UN webcast which the organization UN Watch is now publicizing. The conference is planning to devise a new agreement to regulate arms transfers. Hmmm.
UN Watch has discovered that the countries elected to the five regional groups include Iran, Japan, and South Korea for the Asian group; Kenya, Egypt and Nigeria for Africa; Azerbaijan, Belarus, and Ukraine for Eastern Europe; Australia, Netherlands and Switzerland for the Western Europe & Others Group; and Mexico and two others for Latin America. (See U.N. webcast here, announcing election of Iran at minute 4:45.)
Commenting on Iran's selection, Hillel Neuer of UN Watch said
"Right after a UN Security Council report found Iran guilty of illegally transferring guns and bombs to Syria, which is now murdering thousands of its own people, it defies logic, morality and common sense for the UN to now elect this same regime to a global post in the regulation of arms transfers," said Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, a non-governmental monitoring group based in Geneva.
"This is like choosing Bernie Madoff to police fraud on the stock market. And the U.N.'s scandalous choice of Iran is exactly why we fear that Syria's declared bid for a U.N. Human Rights Council seat is not impossible."
What? Syria, which is slaughtering hundreds of its civilian citizens daily and turning untold thousands into refugees, is a serious candidate for the UN's Human Rights Council? You read that correctly. And why not? It would be a perfect complement to such other members of the Human Rights group as Libya, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia and now Venezuela.
According to another UN Watch briefing:
In the past decade, the U.N. Human Rights Council elected Col. Muammar Gaddafi's Libya as chair, hailed Sri Lanka's "promotion and protection of all human rights" after its army had killed thousands of civilians, and convened an emergency session to lament the death of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, founder of the Hamas terrorist organization. (snip)
According to a U.S.-sponsored and EU-backed draft resolution that was debated today during informal meetings at the council in Geneva, the murderous regime of Bashar al-Assad is a declared candidate for a seat on the 47-nation U.N. body, in elections to be held next year at the 193-member General Assembly.
As part of the U.N.'s 53-nation Asian group, Syria's candidacy would be virtually assured of victory due to the prevalent system of fixed slates, whereby regional groups orchestrate uncontested elections, naming only as many candidates as allotted seats.
That's how non-democracies like China, Cuba, Russia and Saudi Arabia won their current seats, and how Pakistan and Venezuela are about to do the same.
(snip)
Syria is already a member of other UN human wrongs organization UN Watch reveals.
[T]his past November Syria won unanimous election to two human rights committees of UNESCO, the U.N.'s Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.
Despite the suspension of Assad's regime from the Arab League, the very same nations' UNESCO ambassadors in Paris refused to allow objections to a country's human rights record to interfere with their backroom rotation deals-lest one day the precedent be used against them. They nominated Syria, and it was duly elected.
Meanwhile the UN continues to condemn the United States, which contributes over 22% of the UN's budget, and Israel.
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