The United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) chamber. in New York City. Photo: MusikAnimal via Wikimedia Commons.

Iran was expelled from the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), a UN women’s rights subsidiary, on Wednesday after the passage of a US-led resolution in response to Iran’s brutal crackdown on ongoing protests.

Speaking at the UN’s Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), the 54 member body that the CSW is subsidiary to, US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield said that removing Iran was the direct appeal of Iranian women activists. “Iran’s membership at this moment is an ugly stain on the commission’s credibility,” Thomas-Greenfield said.

The resolution passed by a vote of 29 to 8, with 11 abstentions. Iran joined the CSW as an elected member in March and was due to serve a term lasting until 2026. The US resolution, which was co-sponsored by 9 other countries including the UK, Israel, and Australia, removes Iran from the commission “with immediate effect.”

Speaking before the vote, Israel’s Ambassador Gilad Erdan said that Iran’s presence on the commission was an embarrassment to the United Nations system.

“The moral bankruptcy in these halls never ceases to amaze me,” Erdan said. “Yet today we are here to address one of the lowest points of the UN’s institutionalized distortion. Iran should never have received a seat on the Commission on the Status of Women. This is only part of the moral distortion that has made the UN so impotent.”

Erdan added that removing Iran from the CSW was an important step, but called on nations to reject a renewed nuclear deal with the Islamic Republic. “This regime’s destructive nature cannot be changed. And whoever chooses to sign such a deal today – after everything we know – with Iran will only aid in paving Iran’s path to a weapon of mass destruction, and will permit hundreds of billions of dollars to flow into the coffers of the regime, giving Iran the resources to continue murdering and destroying.”

Erdan closed his remarks by saying, in Farsi and English: “Women, Life, Freedom”, the slogan of the Iranian protest movement.

Opposition to the resolution, voiced by Russia, China, and Iran itself, among others, centered on procedural objections about whether ECOSOC had the power to remove an elected member of CSW, supposed Western hypocrisy over human rights, and the risk of setting a precedent for expelling other countries with poor human rights records from UN bodies.

“Did we meet regarding the membership of the United States on the Commission after the wave of violence and vandalism following the death of George Floyd?” Russian Deputy Permanent Representative Gennady Kuzmin said.

Russia attempted to introduce a motion that would have delayed the vote by sending the US draft resolution to the UN Office of Legal Affairs for an opinion on whether it was in accord with ECOSOC’s procedures. That proposal was rejected by the council on procedural grounds in a vote.

Both supporters and opponents of the resolution acknowledged that expelling an elected member of a UN commission was unprecedented, but proponents of the measure noted that Iran’s exceptional brutality warranted their expulsion from CSW.

The US effort to expel Iran from the CSW was announced by Vice President Kamala Harris in November in response to the Iran’s efforts to suppress months of protests sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini, a young Kurdish woman, in police custody in September. Amini, 22, died after being sent to an “educational and orientation” class following her arrest by Iran’s Morality Police for allegedly not wearing her hijab, the headscarf all Iranian women are compelled to wear, in the proper manner. Iran Human Rights, a Norway-based NGO, said that as of 7 Dec. at least 458 people had been killed, including 63 children and 29 women, and 11 people sentenced to death in the ongoing protest movement.