Saudi Arabia to be appointed chair of UN’s gender equality forum

Sjmarf@sh.itjust.works to Not The Onion@lemmy.world – 632 points –
Saudi Arabia to be appointed chair of UN’s gender equality forum amid ongoing assault on women’s rights
amnesty.org
84

What's next? North Korea as chair of the human rights forum?

Israel for world peace!
America for workers rights!
Turkmenistan for world trade!

Marocco for the Decolonization Committee! Luxemburg for the United Nations Population Fund!

Fucking stupid timeline we're trapped in

"I'd rather be sliding"

I made a nicer shirt than that a while ago, but it's what today's craptacular search gives up.

Man, the world’s gonna be a MUCH better place when the House of Saud finally goes the way of the dinosaur.

Unless it's just replaced with something objectively worse...which wouldn't be the first time in history something like that happened.

They already massacred Yemen as a monarchy while their crown prince is known for dismembering journalists, they're about as bad as it gets.

Maybe I'm just cynical, but I can imagine many, many ways it could get worse and only a few of them involve nuclear or bio weapons.

This oil fields aren’t moving. If the Saus family is ousted, we just talk to the new family

What I would to see is a Saud realizing he’s on the outs, crying on the tarmac. But that’s just mean

They already did, but some other Saudis realised those dinosaur bones had oil and they went full circle again.

I believe one day in the future, maybe by aliens hands or maybe by some incredible new discovery, religion will cease to exist and the world will be finally peacefull with people working for the betterment of their lifes not praying for a ghost

edit: a religion plague that kills only dumb people also works lol

This will not happen, as long as other people find a way to use "religion" for power, influence or financial gain. Some people already thought that the mass adaption of the internet would be the end of religion, scams and other fraud preying on the gullible minds, because people could just read up what the catch is and not fall for it, right?

Unfortunately the scams just adapted, made their own flashy homepages that mostly outranked critical information and people just choose to belive what they want to belive.

I don't want to nitpick, because everyone gets what you're trying to say.

But dinosaurs still exist today: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_birds

I would also be fine with them evolving into something more relevant to the times

it may be hard to believe but womens rights have been progressing steadily. link

Don't get me wrong, there's a long long way to go, but I'm glad they at least seem to be heading in a positive direction.

Fair enough. If you want to solve the problem of gender equality, give it to the experts.

Amnesty is not a news source. They are fundraising, here. The article is devoid of necessary contextual information.

UN Commission executive boards are elected not appointed positions. In some UN bodies, chairs rotate in alphabetical order, but not this one. Maybe there was a midterm vacancy and the seat was filled by an appointment process? What is that process? When is the earliest the seat could be recalled?

I can't find anything about their process.

There's really not much about it, the UN page is here: https://www.un.org/en/global-issues/gender-equality

Mostly they seem to have conferences every decade or so and occasionally declare a "International day for X". Seems like a PR kind of thing to me.

But at any rate it's a bad look for the UN. Indicates a dysfunction in the organization that whatever process they have allowed this to happen. I mean it looks like it's a PR campaign that actually makes them look bad. If Guterres was competent he'd shut the thing down entirely and start another one that didn't suck. But since he's an idiot and he will probably just say it's somehow Israel's fault.

Amnesty is not a news source.

It is providing news.

They are fundraising, here.

Their website has a donate button. This article doesn't ask for donations, although it does advertise another Amnesty report.

What? They literally aren't journalists and this literally isn't journalism. It's click bait to get people to click that donate button.

They may not be journalists, but this certainly is news.

"They campaign against abuses of human rights worldwide."

The information shared seems to be high-quality and relevant to their cause. It certainly isn't "10 bad things about Saudi Arabia, number 7 will shock you".

Yeah it's not serious news for serious people. It's click bait. Not as transparent as your example perhaps, but not much different.

If the article is clickbate then it should be easy to respond to the serious points (for serious people) that:-

Saudi Arabia’s 2022 Personal Status Law, creates gender-based discrimination in

  • marriage,
  • divorce,
  • child custody,
  • inheritance.

Saudi Arabia’s authorities supress freedom of expression including expressing support (ie tweeting about) for women’s rights.

Saudi Arabia must demonstrate its commitment through concrete actions domestically.

Here you go, here's what an actual article on this looks like.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/27/saudi-arabia-un-womens-rights-commission

Ironically your preferred article uses Amnesty "clickbait" International as one of it's sources.

Right at the top of the guardian's website it says "Support us now". Doesn't that, by your definition, make it clickbait?

Uhhh, why are you so hostile? I didn't make up the concept of good journalism versus sensational shit.

This the the part I am talking about. None of these details are included in Amnesty's blog post, because it cuts against the outrage. Can't very well lose your shit over it if nobody else wants the chair. I think it's safe to say that anyone concerned about this now do their part to make sure the body has the impetus to contest the seat, next time. Perhaps there is more to the story. Perhaps this was a protest? Perhaps spring in the body with no time to mount a challenge? I don't know.

Saudi Arabia has been chosen as the chair of the UN commission that is supposed to promote gender equality and empower women around the world, after an unopposed bid for leadership condemned by human rights groups because of the kingdom’s “abysmal” record on women’s rights.

The Saudi ambassador to the UN, Abdulaziz Alwasil, was elected as chair of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), by “acclamation” on Wednesday, as there were no rival candidates and no dissent at the CSW’s annual meeting in New York.

Alwasil was endorsed by the group of Asia-Pacific states on the commission. When the outgoing chair, the Filipino envoy to the UN, Antonio Manuel Lagdameo, asked the 45 members if they had any objections there was silence in the chamber.

“I hear no objection. It is so decided,” Lagdameo said.

Normally a country holds the chair for two years, but the Philippines was put under pressure from other members of the Asia group to split its tenure and pass the post on to another country after one year. Bangladesh was expected to take over but late in the process, Saudi Arabia stepped in and lobbied for the chair, in what is widely seen as an attempt to burnish the kingdom’s image.

why are you so hostile?

Because you lumped a well respected human rights NGO in with buzzfeed.

You were attacking the messenger, not the message, which made me think you were defending SA's appalling human rights record. But you've admitted what was written is correct so I'm much less hostile now.

I didn't make up the concept of good journalism versus sensational shit.

In this case the "sensational shit" was one of the sources that the good journalism was based on.

None of these details are included in Amnesty's blog post.

Is it really relevant that the seat was won uncontested? Not to an organisation who's sole purpose is to highlight human rights abuses. Not to OP. OP could have linked to the Guardian's article rather than Amnesty's but the point they are making about hypocrisy remains.

I think Amnesty is half shit. This is what they do. They spread half truths and outrage bait and raise money with it. They use some of that money to do some great and important work. They also use some of that money to spread the shit.

This article was not published to inform people. It was published to outrage people and raise money off it. Amnesty is glad this dude got appointed. 🤑

Except they don't, they even link to a more detailed article that includes many more reference links for more information. Not to mention entire reports about the human rights abuses in detail.

There is no evidence they 'spread half truths' or 'outrage bait.' Sounds like you just want to discredit them because the human rights abuses they report about Israel make you uncomfortable.

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The UN: how can we be more of a joke to the world??

Oh oh, let's appoint an atheist to the board of Islamic affairs!

Even then, I think an average atheist politician would handle Islamic affairs more fairly than an average Muslim politician would handle gender equality affairs, at least in most cases.

There is no atheist book that the atheist has to follow. The Quran, on the other hand, has misogyny kind of built into it, sadly.

Edit: I feel like I should add that this misogyny problem isn't unique to Islam. The Abrahamic religions all have outdated takes on gender equality. I would have the same negative feelings about a devout Christian politician being put in charge of gender equality.

Well, if you want to know how gender inequality works, just ask the Saudis.

It's getting harder and harder to make satire because it keeps becoming reality.

This is how you know the UN is a complete fucking joke at this point that we still waste tax dollars on

The UN is working 100% as intended. You want world war 3 because you dislike what this article says? Absolutely delusional.

Tax dollars

Tell us more about your country's attitude towards abortion

You mean Canada? We've had pro choice for years. Do not assume everyone is American

Also this makes you and everyone else who does this look like an asshole so fuck off

Akchually, I know what you're saying but technically you're also American, as in, from the continent of America. I'm just being cheeky ignore me.