The latest uproar at the embattled United Nations exploded on Thursday, as Iran — a country that brutally oppresses women and just murdered thousands of its own citizens to thwart a popular uprising — was named vice-chair of the U.N. Commission for Social Development (CSocD), an agency whose purview includes women’s rights and democracy.
“Yet another reason why we are not a member of, nor do we participate in, this ridiculous ‘Commission for Social Development,’” sighed U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Mike Waltz.
Watchdog group U.N. Watch noted that Iran was elected vice-chair of CSocD without any objections from the other members, even though the brutish Iranian regime is among the world’s worst offenders against the commission’s nominal themes of “promoting democracy, gender equality, and ensuring tolerance and non-violence.”
“Western democracies failed to take action to block Iran’s election. By contrast, in recent years, they did make sure to stop Russia from getting elected to similar UN ECOSOC Commissions. They should have done the same against the Islamic Regime,” U.N. Watch said.
“By electing Iran to help lead a commission devoted to democracy, women’s rights and non-violence, the U.N. makes itself into a mockery. This is a regime that brutalizes women for not covering their hair, and that just massacred tens of thousands of its own civilians in two days,” said U.N. Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer.
“For Iranian women who risk prison or worse just for taking off a headscarf, watching Tehran get a vice-chair on a U.N. social-development commission feels like a slap in the face,” Iran analyst Lisa Daftari told Fox News on Thursday.
“Having the Iranian regime in the leadership of a U.N. body tasked with promoting democracy, gender equality, tolerance and non-violence is appalling and like fox guarding the hen house,” said National Council of Resistance of Iran deputy director Alireza Jafarzadeh.
“The vast majority of the Iranian people are calling for regime change because the mullahs are the world’s leading human rights violators, misogynist to the core, and they slaughter the voices of dissent by thousands,” Jafarzadeh said.
Iran’s appointment to the CSocD was even more astonishing given that Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi was just removed from the list of speakers to the U.N. Human Rights Council meeting on February 23 under intense public pressure, including a 100,000-signature petition drive organized by U.N. Watch.
The debacle at CSocD was the second major Iran-related controversy for the United Nations this week, after Secretary-General Antonio Guterres reportedly wrote a letter of congratulations to the murderous Iranian Islamist regime on the 47th anniversary of the revolution that brought it to power.
Iranian media touted the High Development Index (HDI) granted to it by the 2025 Human Development Report from the United Nations as justification for its representative to the U.N., Abbas Tajik, taking the vice-chairmanship of the Commission for Social Development.
“Iran’s score improved from last year’s 0.780 to 0.779 in 2025. The country ranks 75 out of 193 countries and territories, placing it in the ‘High Human Development’ category. Between 1990 and 2023, Iran’s HDI value changed from 0.626 to 0.799, a change of 27.6 percent,” boasted the Tehran Times.
The CSoD was established by the United Nations in 1946 and acquired its current name in 1966. It ostensible purpose is to “provide advice to the U.N. on social development issues” and promote social policies that “support the overall development goals of the UN, particularly in relation to eradicating poverty, advancing social integration, and ensuring full employment and decent work for everyone.”
The Iranian regime has recently been successful at ensuring full employment for gravediggers and morticians. The Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) on Friday updated its death toll from Tehran’s crackdown on protests last month to over 7,000. Contrary to regime propaganda that most of the casualties were killed by the protesters themselves, HRANA said only 214 of the confirmed fatalities were government forces.
Iran’s previous major uprising, in 2022, which was also suppressed by a brutal crackdown, began after a young Kurdish woman named Mahsa Amini was killed by the infamous “morality police” for allegedly wearing her mandatory headscarf improperly. The protests came to be known as the “Women, Life, Freedom” movement because so many women bravely raised their voices against the entrenched misogyny of the Iranian Islamist government.
On Monday, the newly minted vice chair of the U.N. Commission for Social Development sentenced a Nobel Prize-winning leader of the “Women, Life, Freedom” movement, human rights activist Narges Mohammadi, to another seven years in prison for daring to raise her voice against the evil of Tehran. Mohammadi has been physically abused during her long incarceration at Iran’s infamous Evin prison. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2023 for her courageous “fight against the oppression of women in Iran.”
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