Human Rights Council faces scandal after expert elections in Iran and China

The United Nations Human Rights Council sparked outrage 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 UN elected Beijing and Tehran’s loyal operatives as ‘human rights experts’ – without a vote, without shame. These regimes persecute minorities, imprison anyone who speaks freely, and rule through fear and censorship.

Neuer added: “The committee that drafted the UN anti-racist convention is now captured by those who embody racism, repression and the silencing of the truth. It is an inversion of human rights and a stain on the UN itself. »

Trump must condition UN funding on real reforms, ex-diplomats urge

Spokespeople for the U.N. Secretary-General and the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights did not immediately respond to press inquiries from Fox News Digital.

In February, the Trump administration withdrew from the council. President Donald Trump said at the time: “They’re going to eventually lose credibility like other organizations, and then they’re going to be nothing.”

Orde Kittrie, senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Fox News Digital: “The election of the UN Human Rights Council to its advisory committee of China’s Ren Yisheng and Iran’s Afsaneh Nadipour is a shameful indication of the extent to which the UNHRC has become a mechanism not intended to promote human rights around the world, but rather to distract the world’s attention from the world’s worst human rights violations.

Anti-regime protesters rallied against the arrival of Massoud Pezeshkian, the Iranian president, ahead of his appearance at the United Nations General Assembly and defended resistance leaders. September 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 gross human rights violations, including against the people of Xinjiang and Tibet. The respected Freedom House ranks China among the countries in the world with the lowest scores on political rights and civil liberties. it’s analogous to putting a wolf in charge of a henhouse.

Trump removes us from the UN Human Rights Council and bans funding to UNRWA

According to Kittrie, “the report begins by noting that ‘(g)enocide and crimes against humanity took place 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 imprisoned in Tehran’s infamous Evin Penitentiary for political dissent, wrote on

Iran’s representative is “a long-time representative of the Islamic Republic to the Advisory Committee of the UN Human Rights Council. Nadipour is not a rights advocate: during the Women, Life and Freedom uprising, she dismissed global support for Iranian women as “politically motivated,” siding with the regime’s repression.

Chinese Vice President Han Zheng addresses the 78th United Nations General Assembly at the UN headquarters in New York, September 21, 2023. (Ed Jones/AFP via Getty Images)

Bazargan added: “As Iran’s ambassador to Denmark, her embassy pressured Iranian women to accept divorce conditions imposed by clerics, even threatening to lose custody of children. She served a regime that imposes the hijab, allows child marriage and imprisons women’s rights activists.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

The US government, both Democratic and Republican, has listed the Islamic Republic of Iran as a top state sponsor of terrorism and has issued voluminous reports on widespread human rights violations in the country.

Fox News Digital has contacted the Iranian mission to the UN and the Chinese embassy in Washington DC for comment.