Saudi Arabia to be appointed chair of UN’s gender equality forum
Saudi Arabia to be appointed chair of UN’s gender equality forum
Ahead of the expected announcement that Saudi Arabia will be appointed chair of the UN women’s rights forum at the annual meeting of the UN Commission of the Status of Women today, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for Advocacy, Sherine Tadros, said: “The Commission on the Status of Women has ...
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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.
Page 22 re: election of officers.
https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/n97/775/21/pdf/n9777521.pdf
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. 🤑
Those points are all true as far as I know.