Why Does Australia in U.N. Back Iran on Women?

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong are keeping quiet about the fact that  Australia voted to install the Islamic Government of Iran on the UN body determining policy on women’s rights, human rights, disarmament, and terrorism prevention. 

On 10th April, the Islamic Republic of Iran was nominated by the UN’s 54-nation Economic and Social Council to sit on the UN’s Committee for Program and Coordination. Other democracies that took part in this infamous decision are Canada, France, Spain, Norway, the Netherlands, the UK, Finland, Switzerland, Austria, and Finland.

Some of those democracies are now saying that they did not actually take part in a vote in favour. This is misleading. Iran was nominated by the Asian group. The democracies joined in the consensus to nominate Iran. They could have opposed the nomination. The U.S. was the only country to do so. They also could have proposed an alternative country to sit on the Committee instead of Iran as has been done in the past. https://x.com/HillelNeuer/status/2044589062435246579

Sexual Violence & Execution

The Islamic regime has institutionalised crimes against women as an integral part of Government policy. It has used sexual violence, mass rape, mutilation, incarceration, torture and execution against thousands of Iranian women. 

Maliheh Firouzeh, 32 (in the photo below) was just one of an estimated 45,000 Iranian protestors massacred by the Iranian regime this year on January 8-9. Her body was returned to her family with broken bones, burns, a severed leg, and an eye gouged out.  The regime claims it was a “suicide”.  https://x.com/LouFrance75/status/2040391434105397350

The UN itself has recognised that girls and women were raped in Iranian prisons before being executed, as far back as the 1980s. https://iranwire.com/en/society/60172/

And a UK Parliamentary inquiry in 2013 referred to the Iranian state’s “role in actively promoting sexual torture as a tool for political control.” https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmintdev/writev/934/m35.htm

Occasionally the resistance by Iranian women erupts onto international headlines, as happened in October 2022 following the murder of 22 year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody. She was arrested for showing some hair despite wearing the compulsory hijab.This sparked the #WOMENLIFEFREEDOM protest movement. Countless women in Iran took to the streets, cut their hair, and burned their headscarves. Thousands were arrested and killed.

Pedophilia

Pedophilia is legal under the Islamic regime. Iranian law allows a girl or boy child to be married off at any age with the consent of the legal guardian and the sanction by the court. In Iran thousands of girls as young as 9 are married off to older men. This despite the fact that the international human rights system has identified any marriage before the age of 18 as forced marriage.

The Australian Government could not have been unaware of Iran’s record towards women when it voted to put Iran on this UN Committee. 

Terrorism

It certainly was aware of Iran’s record on terrorism. In addition to women’s rights and human rights, the Committee will also deal with terrorism prevention. PM Albanese officially designated Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a state sponsor of terrorism after it engaged in firebombing Melbourne’s Adass Israel synagogue. In 2025, Australia expelled the Iranian ambassador.

And now PM Albanese is making them responsible for UN terrorism prevention.

Please explain.

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