The NGO UN Watch criticized the recent announcement that Qatar was elected to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women.
“No joke: Qatar was just elected to the U.N. Women’s Rights Commission,” the organization wrote on X. “Under the regime’s misogynistic laws, Qatari women wishing to attend the next U.N. women’s rights summit will need to first seek permission from their male guardians. The inmates are running the asylum.”
“The Muslim Brotherhood is now on the U.N. Women Rights Commission,” wrote Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch.
Despite its checkered history of women’s rights, Qatar participated in the 69th annual session of the Commission on the Status of Women, held at the U.N. headquarters in New York in March.
UN Watch also criticized the commission in March when it announced that its annual session would be chaired by Saudi Arabia “despite its abysmal record on women’s rights,” the organization stated.
“It’s surreal,” Neuer said. “Electing Saudi Arabia to head the world body for protecting women’s rights is like putting Dracula in charge of the blood bank.”
“As chair, Saudi Arabia is now in a key position to influence the planning and decisions of the world’s top women’s rights body,” he continued. “Yet despite cosmetic reforms, Saudi Arabia continues to subject women to legal discrimination, where they are effectively enslaved under a male guardianship system that was enshrined into law three years ago, ironically on International Women’s Day.”
“One of the world’s most patriarchal and misogynistic regimes now chairs the Commission on the Status of Women,” Neuer said.
