Originally published 2021-04-23.
On 20 April 2021, the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) elected the Islamic Republic of Iran to a four-year seat on the Commission on the Status of Women, the main UN body devoted to gender equality. Iran won 43 votes in a secret ballot. China, whose own record is heavily criticised, also won a seat in that round of elections, according to press reports. Human rights groups called Iran's election absurd. Less than two years later, in December 2022, ECOSOC took the unprecedented step of expelling Iran from the commission.
This is the story of how a country with some of the world's strictest laws on women came to sit on that body, and how it was removed.
What the Commission on the Status of Women does
The commission was set up in 1946, one of the first bodies the United Nations created. Its job is to promote women's political, economic, civil, social and educational rights, monitor progress and set global standards. Each year representatives of member states meet at UN headquarters in New York for a session that produces agreed conclusions on a chosen theme, from women's economic empowerment to violence against women.
The commission has 45 members, elected by ECOSOC for four-year terms. Seats are divided by region: 13 for Africa, 11 for Asia and the Pacific, 9 for Latin America and the Caribbean, 8 for Western Europe and other states, and 4 for Eastern Europe. Because regional groups often put forward exactly as many candidates as there are seats, controversial countries can end up elected with little real competition.
The April 2021 vote
Iran ran for one of the Asia-Pacific seats and received 43 votes from ECOSOC's 54 members, enough to win comfortably. Its term was due to run from the commission's 2022 session until March 2026.
Because the ballot was secret, nobody can say for certain who supported Iran. The Geneva-based monitoring group UN Watch said it had determined that at least four of the 15 European Union and Western democracies on ECOSOC must have voted for Iran, based on the arithmetic of the result. That claim is an inference from the vote count, not a confirmed list of names.
Election to the commission is not an endorsement of a country's human rights record. It reflects regional bargaining and the UN's principle that all member states may serve. That is precisely why critics argue the system lets governments with poor records gain a voice on bodies meant to hold them to account.
Why Iran's seat drew outrage
Critics pointed to Iranian laws and practices that run directly against the commission's goals:
- Compulsory hijab. Since 1983 all women in Iran must cover their hair in public. Women who appear without a headscarf face fines or prison, and activists who campaigned against the law, such as Saba Kord Afshari, received long sentences.
- Child marriage. Iranian civil law sets the minimum marriage age for girls at 13, and younger with a father's and a court's permission.
- Unequal family law. A woman generally needs her husband's permission to obtain a passport and travel abroad, and her testimony and inheritance count for less than a man's in many cases.
- So-called honour killings. Iranian officials and media have acknowledged hundreds of such killings a year, though reliable national figures are hard to obtain and estimates vary.
Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, put the objection memorably, comparing the vote to "making an arsonist into the town fire chief."
China's record under scrutiny
China's presence also raised questions. Until 2015 the government enforced a one-child policy, often through heavy fines and, in many documented cases, forced abortions and sterilisations. The policy was replaced by a two-child limit and later a three-child limit in 2021.
More recently, researchers, journalists and rights groups have documented the mass detention of Uyghurs and other mainly Muslim minorities in Xinjiang, estimated at more than a million people. Reports by the Associated Press and others found that birth rates in Uyghur regions fell sharply as authorities pushed intrauterine devices and sterilisation on women. In 2022 the UN human rights office concluded that the abuses in Xinjiang may amount to crimes against humanity. China denies all of these allegations and describes its facilities as vocational training centres.
Mahsa Amini and Iran's expulsion
The turning point came in September 2022, when 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died in the custody of Iran's morality police after being detained over her headscarf. Her death set off nationwide protests led by women under the slogan "Woman, Life, Freedom." Security forces responded with lethal force; by mid-December rights monitors counted close to 500 people killed and more than 18,000 detained.
On 14 December 2022 ECOSOC voted 29 to 8, with 16 abstentions, to remove Iran from the commission for the rest of its 2022 to 2026 term. The United States sponsored the resolution, which cited Iran's crackdown on women and girls. Russia was among those opposed. Iran's ambassador called the move illegal and politically motivated. It was the first time a member had been expelled from the commission over its treatment of women.
What this means for UN human rights bodies
The episode shows both the weakness and the limits of the UN's membership rules. Countries with poor records can win seats through regional slates and secret ballots, which supporters of reform say undermines the credibility of the bodies concerned. Saudi Arabia's election to the same commission in 2017 prompted similar criticism.
Yet the 2022 vote also proved that members can act when a government's conduct becomes impossible to ignore. Watchers of these bodies tend to focus on a few practical questions: whether regions present competitive slates, whether votes are recorded, and whether membership comes with any expectation of cooperating with UN investigators. For Iranian women still challenging the hijab law, the expulsion was a symbolic victory rather than a change on the ground, but it put their cause at the centre of the UN's agenda.
Sources: UN Watch: UN elects Iran to top women's rights body (April 2021); AP via News4Jax: UN council ousts Iran from commission backing women (14 December 2022); Wikipedia: Commission on the Status of Women; Wikipedia: Saba Kord Afshari; Wikipedia: Girls of Enghelab Street; earlier coverage via Daily Wire.
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