Iran has been elected vice-chair of the United Nations Charter Committee, a body tasked with examining and strengthening the principles of the U.N. Charter, drawing criticism from Israel and renewed scrutiny of the organization’s selection processes.
The appointment was approved during the committee’s opening meeting as part of its executive composition, through an agreed procedure and without a formal vote.
At a U.N. press briefing, Fox News Digital asked whether Iran’s record aligns with the values of the charter and whether the secretary-general would condemn the move.
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“The election of any member state to a body is the result of voting by member states themselves,” Stéphane Dujarric, spokesperson for the secretary-general, said. “So, questions about who gets elected to which bodies is a question for member states. We expect every member state of this organization to uphold the charter, to uphold the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, given that they themselves signed on to this club that the U.N. is and those are founding, some of our founding documents.”
Pressed on whether the secretary-general would condemn Iran’s election, the spokesperson added, “It is not for him to condemn the election of any member state to a body. He will condemn and has when member states, through their actions, he feels, violate the charter or human rights.”
The Charter Committee operates under the U.N. Legal Committee and meets annually. Its mandate includes examining issues related to the charter and proposing ways to reinforce its implementation, though its work typically requires consensus among member states and rarely results in binding action.
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Anne Bayefsky, president of Human Rights Voices and director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust, sharply criticized the move, linking it to long-standing concerns about the U.N.’s performance.
“The U.N. created a committee back in 1974 supposedly to ‘enhance the ability of the U.N. to achieve its purposes.’ The trouble is that, ever since, the U.N. has been on a downward trajectory on actually achieving its primary purposes, namely, maintaining international peace and security and promoting respect for fundamental human rights,” Bayefsky said.
“Given that Iran is the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism and a country committed to the annihilation of the Jewish state and the bloody repression of its own people, the U.N. appointment helps clarify that in our time, U.N. purposes are in fact antithetical to peace, rights and human dignity.”
Israel’s Ambassador to the U.N. Danny Danon sharply criticized Iran’s appointment.
“This is a moral absurdity,” Danon said. “A regime that violates the basic principles of the U.N. cannot represent them.
“A country that systematically violates the basic principles of the U.N. cannot sit in a leadership position that deals with strengthening them. The U.N. cannot continue to grant legitimacy to regimes that violate the very principles of its own charter.”
The committee has in recent years served as a forum for political disputes among member states, including criticism directed at Israel, diplomats say. Iran’s selection to a leadership role comes amid ongoing debate over how the U.N. balances representation among member states with concerns about human rights records and adherence to the organization’s founding principles.
The U.N. maintains that leadership positions across its committees are determined by member states, not the secretariat, and reflect internal diplomatic processes rather than endorsement of any government’s policies or record.
