Dozens of countries, including the UK, Canada, Australia, France, and Germany, nominated Iran to join a UN committee that oversees policies regarding human rights, only months after the Islamic Republic massacred tens of thousands of its own citizens, men, women, and children, during protests, and even shot people to death while lying in hospital beds.

Last year, Iran carried out the largest number of executions in almost 40 years.

Iran was selected by the UN’s Economic and Social Council, which comprises 54 nations, including the countries named above as well as Norway, Switzerland, Austria, Finland, Spain, and the Netherlands.

The US was the only country to object, saying that Iran (and Cuba and Nicaragua) were unfit to serve on the committee.

The committee is scheduled to meet next month, and the Islamic Republic is sure to have many words of wisdom on the topics on the agenda: terrorism prevention, disarmament, human rights, gender equality, and women’s empowerment.

Hillel Neuer, the executive director of UN Watch, a non-governmental organisation that monitors the UN, said: “By their cynical actions at the UN, major Western states have betrayed their own human rights principles, severely undermining the rule-based international order that they claim to support.”

(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)