Iran has been appointed to several UN committees on women’s rights, despite the fact that Iran’s legal system limits the rights of women, while the IRGC kills protesters, tortures prisoners, and carries out more executions than any other country.
The Islamic Republic of Iran has been nominated to the U.N. Committee for Program and Coordination, which shapes policy on women’s rights, human rights, disarmament, and terrorism prevention. The nomination was backed by ECOSOC members, including the UK, Spain, Canada, France, Germany, Norway, the Netherlands, Australia, Switzerland, Austria, and Finland.
This is part of a broader pattern. In February 2026, an Iranian regime official took her seat as a full member of the UN Human Rights Council’s Advisory Committee, contributing to discussions on gender perspectives and gender-based violence, while Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister addressed the council’s high-level opening session.
Iran was previously removed from a comparable body in 2022, when ECOSOC voted 29 to 8 to remove it from the Commission on the Status of Women following its violent crackdown on protesters after the death of Mahsa Amini. It is now being nominated back onto similar bodies.
Iran has no standing to shape global policy on women’s rights. The country executed 65 women in 2025, up from 34 in 2024, 26 in 2023, and 15 in 2022, the highest number of women’s executions recorded in 25 years, with nine more executed in the first two months of 2026. During the January 2026 protests, at least 250 women were killed by government forces using live ammunition, and 207 cases of femicide were recorded across Iran in 2025.
The UN’s own Special Rapporteur on Iran has described the country as maintaining a system of gender apartheid, enforced through the Chastity and Hijab Law, which criminalizes women’s dress through 71 articles, imposes fines and prison terms, and empowers intelligence agencies to surveil and punish women in public life. The legal age of marriage for girls remains 13, with younger girls eligible for marriage with a father’s approval.
Iran’s record on human rights is no less disqualifying. By the end of December 2025, Iran had executed over 2,000 people, the highest known number of executions since the late 1980s, with more than half for drug offenses in violation of international law and with women and ethnic minorities increasingly targeted.
In January 2026, security forces carried out mass killings of protesters amid a nationwide internet and telecommunications shutdown, with independent monitors verifying over 6,000 fatalities. At least six juvenile offenders were executed in 2025, in direct violation of Iran’s obligations under the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Hundreds of lawyers, journalists, human rights defenders, and religious minorities remain arbitrarily detained.
On terrorism, Iran has been designated the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism by the United States since 1984. The IRGC is designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union, Australia, Canada, Argentina, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Ukraine, and more than a dozen other countries.
Through the IRGC and its Quds Force, Iran funds, arms, and directs Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Houthis, and multiple Iraqi militias, while conducting direct attacks against U.S. military personnel, Israeli targets, and dissidents on foreign soil.
On disarmament, Iran has pursued a covert nuclear program, developed long-range ballistic missiles capable of reaching Europe, and supplied Shahed drones to Russia for use in Ukraine. In August 2025, a senior IRGC commander stated publicly that Iran has been developing long-range missiles for two decades, capable of reaching Europe and potentially targeting U.S. assets.
During the 64th session of the UN Commission for Social Development, held February 2–10, 2026, Iran’s Abbas Tajik was elected vice-chair of the 65th session without objection, as the commission prepared to focus on democracy, gender equality, tolerance, and non-violence, four areas in which Iran’s record is among the worst in the world.
Iran is a theocratic authoritarian state with no free elections, no independent judiciary, and no permitted political opposition. It executes religious minorities, detains journalists, lawyers, and human rights defenders, and suppresses ethnic minority populations, while funding and directing Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, and multiple militant proxy networks across the region.
Several structural factors explain how Iran secures these nominations. The UN operates through regional group nominations, and Iran, as a member of the Asian group, can obtain a nomination simply by being present and active within that bloc, regardless of its conduct. Those nominations are typically rubber-stamped.
The ECOSOC members who backed Iran’s nomination included Western democracies that simultaneously designate the IRGC as a terrorist organization, a contradiction that reflects diplomatic horse-trading in which countries support each other’s nominees in exchange for reciprocal support with no regard for whether the nominee is appropriate.
Some Western governments have also historically believed that keeping Iran inside multilateral institutions preserves a channel for negotiation, particularly on the nuclear file. Beyond that, the UN has no mechanism requiring that a country’s domestic conduct align with the mandate of the committee it joins.
Membership is a political process, not a merit-based one. Iran also pursues these seats strategically, as membership confers legitimacy, intelligence on other nations’ positions, and the ability to obstruct proceedings from within.
In each of the areas covered by these committees, Iran is among the world’s worst active offenders. Its nomination is a demonstration of how the UN’s regional bloc system can be exploited to place the most egregious violators in positions of authority over the norms they systematically destroy.
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