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The United Nations Human Rights Council sparked outrage on Wednesday when it announced that two of the seven experts elected to its advisory committee were from Iran and China.
Hillel Neuer, Executive Director of UN Watch, told Fox News Digital, “The U.N. elected Beijing’s and Tehran’s loyal agents as ‘human rights experts’—without a ballot, without shame. These regimes persecute minorities, jail anyone who speaks freely, and rule through fear and censorship.”
Neuer added, “The committee that once drafted the U.N.’s anti-racism convention has now been captured by those who embody racism, repression, and the silencing of truth. It’s an inversion of human rights—and a stain on the United Nations itself.”
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The spokespeople for the United Nations Secretary General and the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital press queries.
In February, the Trump administration withdrew from the council. President Donald Trump said at the time that, “They’re going to end up losing their credibility like other organizations, and then they’re going to be nothing.”
Orde Kittrie, a Foundation for Defense of Democracies senior fellow, told Fox News Digital “The UNHRC’s election to its advisory committee of China’s Ren Yisheng and Iran’s Afsaneh Nadipour is a disgraceful indication of the extent to which the UNHRC has become a mechanism not for promoting global human rights but rather for distracting the world’s attention from the world’s worst human rights abusers.”
Anti-regime protesters rallying against the arrival of Masoud Pezeshkian, Iran’s president, ahead of his appearance at the United Nations for the General Assembly and advocated for resistance leaders. Sept. 23, 2025 (Stephanie Keith/Getty Images)
He added, “Ren Yisheng is a career Chinese diplomat who has distinguished himself as a defender of China’s egregious human rights violations, including against the people of Xinjiang and Tibet. The respected Freedom House rates China as having among the lowest scores for political rights and civil liberties of any country in the world. One need only read the US State Department’s 2024 human rights report on China to realize that naming a Chinese official to a human rights advisory committee is analogous to putting a wolf in charge of a hen house.”
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According to Kittrie, “The report begins by noting that ‘[g]enocide and crimes against humanity occurred during the year in China against predominantly Muslim Uyghurs and members of other ethnic and religious minority groups in Xinjiang.”’
Lawdan Bazargan, a prominent Iranian-American human rights activist, who was imprisoned in Tehran’s infamous Evin penitentiary for political dissent, wrote on X
Iran’s representative is “a long-time representative of the Islamic Republic, to the UN Human Rights Council Advisory Committee. Nadipour is no defender of rights:During the Women, Life, Freedom uprising, she dismissed global support for Iranian women as ‘politically motivated,’ siding with the regime’s crackdown.”
China’s Vice President Han Zheng addresses the 78th United Nations General Assembly at UN headquarters in New York City on Sept. 21, 2023. (Ed Jones/AFP via Getty Images)
Bazargan added, “As Iran’s ambassador in Denmark, her embassy pressured Iranian women to accept cleric-imposed divorce terms, even threatening loss of child custody. She has served a regime that forces hijab, allows child marriage, and imprisons women’s rights activists.”
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The U.S. government under both Democratic and Republican administrations have classified the Islamic Republic of Iran as a leading state-sponsor of terrorism and issued voluminous reports about widespread human rights violations in the nation.
Fox News Digital reached out to Iran’s U.N. mission and the Chinese embassy in Washington D.C. for comment.