Thread by @HillelNeuer

No joke: Meet the new Chair of the U.N. Women's Rights Commission.

2/ Ambassador Abdulaziz M. Alwasil of Saudi Arabia is now chairing the U.N. commission on the status of women, “the principal global intergovernmental body exclusively dedicated to the promotion of gender equality, the rights and the empowerment of women.” unwomen.org/en/how-we-work…

3/ @UN_Women and their chief @SimaBahous are even cheering their pride in having this Sheikh from Saudi Arabia—a country that imprisons and tortures women's rights activists—as Chair of their U.N. Women's Rights Commission:

4/ Under Saudi leadership of the 69th session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women, which runs March 10-21, we learn importantly that the government of Canada is committing “a race-based genocide against Indigenous women.” news.un.org/en/story/2025/…

5/ Apart from platforming misogynistic regimes (Islamic Republic of Iran was another recent member), the commission mainly exists for delegates to congratulate themselves on unanimously adopting meaningless declarations.

6/ Sweden plays a major role in funding UN Women

7/ Watch: the moment when Saudi Arabia was elected to chair the United Nations women's rights body, the Commission on the Status of Women, with no objections. March 27, 2024:

8/ UN Commission Turns Blind Eye to World’s Worst Abusers of Women’s Rights

The UN’s commission on the status of women meets every year and has a unique opportunity to hold country violators of women’s rights to account. Yet instead, it systematically ignores them.

For example:

• The CSW has never adopted a single resolution on Saudi Arabia, which, notwithstanding recent limited reforms, subjugates women through its male guardianship system and jails and tortures women’s rights activists.

• The CSW has never adopted a single resolution on Yemen, which ranks at the bottom of the gender equality index (153/153) and where child marriage is pervasive with more than two thirds of girls being married off before age 18.

• The CSW has never adopted a single resolution on the Democratic Republic of Congo, which has been dubbed the “rape capital of the world.”

• The CSW has never adopted a single resolution on Pakistan, where violence against women is on the rise and conviction rates are low—between 2011 and 2017 over 51,000 cases of domestic violence were reported.

• The CSW has never adopted a single resolution on Iran, where women suffer discrimination under the law in key areas such as marriage, family law, age of criminal responsibility, inheritance, and court testimony. The CSW gives a free pass to Iran for its misogynistic modesty laws, under which women are routinely arrested and sentenced to harsh punishments. If a Muslim woman is found in a relationship with a non-Muslim man, she may be sentenced to be whipped. Women have been sent to jail for speaking out in favor of equal rights for women.

In fact, the CSW squanders a golden opportunity to demand accountability and compliance and gives a free pass on the world’s worst abusers of human rights. Instead, it adopts resolutions on general thematic issues joined by all CSW members, including these abusers to the extent they are members.  For example, in 2018 CSW members joined in resolutions condemning torture, rape and other forms of sexual violence against women in the context of hostage-taking in armed conflicts; acknowledging the need to “accelerate the realization of gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls.” In 2021, CSW members reaffirmed “the commitments to gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls made at relevant United Nations summits and conferences,” among other things.

9/ See here for the full story on the U.N.'s surreal appointment of the misogynistic Saudi Arabia regime to chair the UN Commission on the Status of Women: unwatch.org/outrage-as-sau…