The appointment of Iranian and Chinese diplomats to the UN Human Rights Council's advisory committee has stoked backlash from critics of the global body and Iran citing the two countries' harsh rights record.
Iran’s Afsaneh Nadipour and China’s Ren Yisheng were among seven experts selected on Tuesday for the council’s advisory committee, which is tasked with providing guidance on human rights issues.
US Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Sen. Jim Risch, R-Idaho, said the new appointments were “ludicrous,” questioning how governments accused of severe abuses could advise the UN on human rights.
"How do you expect countries such as China and Iran to advise this organization on human rights?” he wrote on X, adding that “one is exporting terrorism and jailing women, and the other is throwing ethnic minorities in concentration camps.”
Hillel Neuer, chief of pro-Israel watchdog UN Watch, told Fox News Digital that the United Nations “elected Beijing’s and Tehran’s loyal agents as ‘human rights experts’—without a ballot, without shame,” saying both “persecute minorities, jail anyone who speaks freely, and rule through fear and censorship.”
Iranian-American activist Lawdan Bazargan condemned Nadipour’s selection, calling it “a slap in the face to the courageous women of Iran.”
“She has served a regime that forces hijab, allows child marriage and imprisons women’s rights activists,” Bazargan wrote on X.
Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the hawkish Washington-based thinktank the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), also condemned the move in a post on X. “The Islamic Republic has been elected to the UN ‘Human Rights’ Council. The UN is a blight on humanity,” he wrote.
According to Amnesty International, China was the world’s leading executioner in 2024, followed by Iran in second place.
Amnesty said while Beijing keeps its execution figures secret, Iran was responsible for at least 972 executions last year—about 64 percent of the total of 1,518 executions globally.
This month, Iran has executed 72 people in the first nine days of October, bringing the total number of executions this year to at least 1,172.
In addition to executions, rights groups have documented widespread suppression of free speech and assembly in Iran, where activists, journalists and minorities face arbitrary detention.
In China, rights groups including Amnesty International have documented mass incarceration of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang, along with systematic censorship and repression of dissent.
In a televised address a day after his government approved a deal to free hostages and end the fighting, Netanyahu said the campaign’s objectives went beyond Gaza. “I firmly rejected all the pressure because I had one consideration in mind — the security of Israel,” he said.
“That meant achieving the goals of the war: freeing the hostages, eliminating the nuclear and ballistic threat from Iran that endangered our existence, and breaking the Iranian axis, of which Hamas is a central part,” he said.
“Hamas, Hezbollah, the Assad regime, and Iran are all under one umbrella,” he said. “But despite the pressure, we stood firm and acted solely for the security of Israel.”
A day earlier, Iran said it supported the US-brokered Gaza ceasefire and any initiative that would end what it called Israel’s ‘genocidal war’ and secure Palestinian rights. The foreign ministry said Tehran backed efforts leading to “the withdrawal of occupying forces, the entry of humanitarian aid, the release of Palestinian prisoners, and the realization of the fundamental rights of the Palestinian people.”
Government spokeswoman Fatemeh Mohajerani said Tehran would support any lasting peace that benefits Palestinians, while a conservative lawmaker voiced a tougher line, saying Iran-aligned armed groups would keep up their operations against Israel and the United States despite the ceasefire.
Behnam Saeedi, secretary of Iran’s parliament national security commission, told local media that “groups in the resistance front are today stronger and more active than two years ago against America and Israel.” He dismissed US President Donald Trump’s peace plan as unreliable, saying any deal that undermines Palestinian sovereignty “is doomed to fail.”
The ceasefire agreement, reached under a 20-point US proposal backed by Egypt, Qatar and Turkey, includes the release of hostages and prisoners, the withdrawal of Israeli troops from parts of Gaza, and the entry of humanitarian aid.
The two-year Gaza conflict triggered a wider regional war that pitted Israel and the United States against Iran and its allies. Tehran and its partners suffered heavy losses during that period, including the assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, the fall of Syria’s Assad government, and Israeli and US strikes that crippled Iran’s nuclear infrastructure in June.
