UN Human Rights Bodies Shamefully Host Iranian Regime

 

In successive outrages that expose the cavernous hypocrisy and moral bankruptcy festering at the heart of the United Nations, the butcher’s regime in Tehran is being handed not one, but two gilded platforms at UN human rights bodies in Geneva, one immediately after the other.

This is no accident; it is a spitefully calculated, ridiculously biased pattern of the UN bestowing legitimacy on one of the planet’s most blood-drenched tyrannies, even after it has slaughtered tens of thousands of its own people. Such decisions flow naturally from an organisation whose barely concealed anti-Semitism is now on brazen display, so emboldened have its officials become that they no longer trouble to hide their obsessive loathing for Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East heroically defending itself against the very Iranian regime they are now fawning over.

16–20 February: Regime Stooge Takes New Seat on UNHRC Advisory Committee  

The Advisory Committee, risibly billed as the Council’s “think tank,” opens its first session of the year with a week of meetings starting on 16 February. Among its 18 so-called independent experts sits the freshly elected Afsaneh Nadipour of the Islamic Republic of Iran, whose term stretches to 2028.

Nadipour, a lifelong regime diplomat and former Iranian ambassador to Denmark, will absurdly help shape the committee’s work on critical issues including women’s rights.

Highlighted in the official provisional agenda, the session includes:

Integration of a gender perspective into the committee’s work.  

Promotion of a “democratic and equitable international order”, a phrase straight out of Tehran’s anti-Western playbook, often code for undermining liberal democracies and, by extension, Israel’s right to exist.  

Technology-facilitated gender-based violence and its impact on women and girls, an item that rings especially hollow coming from a government that deploys digital surveillance to hunt down unveiled women via AI-powered cameras.

Around quarter of a million Persians take to the streets in mourning and to protest the senseless and wicked state sponsored murder of Mahsa Amini. Islamic authorities opened fire on protesters with live ammunition, reportedly killing thousands. They are said to have blackmailed deceased people's families to sign a ready made statement denying their relative had died at the hands of the authorities and in return they will let them have their dead bodies back for burial.

The irony is beyond grotesque. Iran’s government enforces mandatory hijab laws with AI surveillance, morality police violence, and mass arrests, most infamously in the 2022 “Woman, Life, Freedom” uprising following Mahsa Amini’s death in custody. Thousands of women remain imprisoned. Executions and torture continue unabated.

Yet the UN elected and now seats a representative of this regime on a human rights committee advising on precisely these violations. This isn’t “human rights expertise”; it’s infiltration by a murderous regime that openly calls for Israel’s destruction.

24 February: Iran’s Deputy FM Addresses UN Human Rights Council 2026 Opening  

The farce escalates one week later. On 24 February 2026, Kazem Gharibabadi, Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister for Legal and International Affairs, is scheduled to speak at the UN Human Rights Council’s high-level opening for the 2026 session. Gharibabadi has long been a mouthpiece for the regime who whitewashed Iran’s nuclear programme, ballistic missile tests, support for proxy militias bent on annihilating Israel, and domestic crackdowns.

His appearance follows the removal of Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi from an earlier speaking slot, following a UN Watch pressure campaign that collected more than 150,000 supporters.

Diplomats cannot turn a blind eye when the regime simply substitutes another official. This comes amid Iran’s escalating repression, torture, and executions—all while the regime pours resources into threatening Israel with nuclear annihilation.

Call for Action  

UN Watch rightly calls on democratic member states to walk out during both events—during Nadipour’s participation in the Advisory Committee sessions, and during Gharibabadi’s 24 February address—to send a clear message that the UN will not platform tyrants lecturing on human rights.

Democracies must support genuine Iranian human rights defenders of the “Woman, Life, Freedom” uprising, and stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Israel against this regime’s genocidal ambitions, instead of their oppressors.

By Brian R McGoy  

February 2026 | UK

What You Can Do 

Contact your UN mission: Urge a diplomatic walkout.  

Share widely: Use hashtag #UNWalkOutonIRGC, and tag world leaders and foreign ministers.  

Stand with victims: Support UN Watch’s human rights and monitoring work.

The UN Charter promises to promote human rights and fundamental freedoms, not to provide a stage for their violators. It’s time to end this farce.