UN Watch was quoted in multiple media outlets during November 2022 on topics including protests in Iran, the campaign to kick Iran off the U.N. Women’s Rights Commission, UNRWA’s discovery of a terror tunnel under one of its schools in Gaza, and anti-Israel bias at the U.N.
Featured in The Algemeiner, “UN Palestinian Refugee Agency Finds ‘Man-Made Cavity’ Under Gaza School,” November 30, 2022:
The United Nations Relief Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) on Tuesday announced that it had discovered a “man-made cavity” under one of its schools in Gaza, the latest recognition by the agency that one of its schools may have been used to cover the activities of militant terrorist groups such as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).
In 2021 UNWRA announced it would investigate ten of its staffers after a watchdog group exposed more than 100 teachers, school principals and other employees that praise Hitler, propagate hatred against Jews and support terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians on social media. Earlier this year, UN Watch shared 20 additional examples of UNRWA teachers and staffers in the West Bank, Lebanon and Jordan expressing support for terrorist groups, violence against Jews and Israelis and antisemitism.
Quoted in Fox News, “Fury at Iran continues after alleged murder of woman, sparking UN emergency session,” November 14, 2022:
Today marks the 60th day of continuous protests against the Iranian regime over the death of the 22-year-old woman Mahsa Amini while in the custody of the regime’s brutal morality police for not properly wearing a head covering.
After two months of alleged U.N. bureaucratic inertia, the body’s Human Rights Council is now being forced to respond to the bloodbath in Iran. The head of U.N. Watch, Hillel Neuer, wrote on Twitter: “For the first time in history the United Nations Human Rights Council will hold an emergency session on Iran. We are demanding the creation of an international Commission of Inquiry, a formal call to expel the Islamic Republic from the UN’s top women’s rights body.”
Featured in Quartz, “How to remove Iran from the UN Commission on the Status of Women,” November 30, 2022:
For over two months, since 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died after being arrested by Iran’s moral police for wearing her hijab incorrectly, Iranian women have been protesting relentlessly against a regime that has limited women’s freedom and rights for 43 years.
The first step to get Iran out of the CSW is for a member of the ECOSOC to approve a resolution—similar to the one suggested by UN Watch, a Swiss nonprofit—condemning Iran, and asking for its termination on the commission. According to Reuters, the US is set to introduce such a resolution at a council meeting on Dec. 14. In order to pass, it will need the support of at least 28 of the 54 members, or a majority of members present for the vote.
Featured in Iran International, “Iran Harshly Criticized At UN Human Rights Council,” November 24, 2022:
The UN Human Rights Council met Thursday to discuss the deteriorating situation in the Islamic Republic of Iran, especially with respect to women and children.
In another global move over Iran’s denial of women’s rights and crackdown on protests, calls on the UN to expel the Islamic Republic from the UN Commission on the Status of Women are also getting stronger with Canada, New Zealand, Netherlands and the United States behind the push. UN Watch, an independent non-governmental human rights group based in Geneva, has drafted a resolution for the 54-nation UN Economic Social Council (ECOSOC) to remove Iran.
Quoted in Jewish News Syndicate, “U.S. lawmakers urge world leaders to terminate anti-Israel UN bodies,” November 13, 2022:
In a renewed push of faith-based diplomacy, three heads of the U.S. Congressional Israel Allies Caucus have written to the leaders of more than two dozen countries urging them to vote to shutter two anti-Israel U.N. institutions in a vote that will come before the General Assembly later this year.
The Geneva-based U.N. Watch NGO welcomed all efforts by the U.S. and other states to do away with these bodies.
“These two U.N. entities—the CEIRPP and the DPR—are counterproductive to peace and contrary to the U.N. Charter principles of equality and universality,” U.N. Watch said in a statement.
“The 25-nation CEIRPP is the only G.A. human rights committee devoted to a single cause. Its reports systematically turn a blind eye to Palestinian terrorism against Israeli civilians. The annual resolution renewing its mandate employs anti-Israel terminology when it refers to the Nakba (catastrophe) of Israel’s founding. The DPR is dedicated to spreading anti-Israel propaganda the world over. It seeks to coordinate international boycotts against Israel instead of building bridges for peace.
“Moreover, these entities—funded by U.N. member states—divert limited U.N. resources from the world’s most pressing human rights catastrophes, such as civil wars in Yemen, Syria, Ethiopia and Myanmar, aggression by Russia against Ukraine, China’s mass incarceration of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang, and systematic repression of women by Iran and Saudi Arabia. U.N. Watch applauds all efforts by the U.S. and other UN member states to do away with these detrimental bodies which should have been done long ago,” the statement said.
Quoted in The Jerusalem Post, “Iranian protesters defy violent crackdown by regime forces,” November 20, 2022:
Iranian protesters conducted demonstrations and strikes across Iran on Sunday after regime forces violently cracked down on Kurdish cities in western Iran overnight, over nine weeks after Mahsa Amini was killed by Tehran’s “morality police.”
Hillel Neuer, the executive director of UN Watch, reported on Sunday that the US Ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, had requested a special meeting of the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) in mid-December in order to vote on a draft resolution to expel Iran from the UN Women’s Rights Commission.
