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Watch as UN Watch’s Hillel Neuer is the only person in the room to call out regime-proxy Alena Douhan for hijacking the Human Rights Council to attack the West and excuse despots, all while collecting over $1,000,000 from China, Russia, and Qatar.
Background: The Sanctions Mandate
The UN mandate on Unilateral Coercive Measures (UCMs), a technical term for sanctions, was established by an Iran-sponsored resolution in 2014, with the support of Russia, China, Venezuela, and Cuba. Its primary objective is to invert reality: claiming that Western sanctions, not repressive governments, are to blame for humanitarian crises in targeted countries.
This process grants the facade of UN legitimacy to the twisted narrative that Western nations cause the mass suffering of people in Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea, and elsewhere. Since sanctions limit the economic power dictators use to secure citizen loyalty, these regimes opt to manipulate the UN and its multi-million dollar reports and conferences funded by your tax dollars, to advance their propaganda and absolve themselves of accountability. To citizens living under strict censorship, the regime-controlled media then reports that an independent and “objective” UN body has “concluded” that their repressive leaders are, in fact, the victims.
The absurdity is furthered by the fact that during the annual UCM debates at the Human Rights Council, regimes inundate the UN with front groups masquerading as legitimate human rights organizations to pollute the dialogue and spread further propaganda.
At the latest Human Rights Council session, a Panel Discussion on UCMs was held, featuring the UCMs mandate holder, Alena Douhan, and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk. All NGOs that spoke, except for UN Watch, were regime front groups (GONGOs) acting under the guise of legitimate human rights defenders.
Of the six NGOs that spoke on the UCM panel, five were based in Tehran or Havana. Given how these regimes treat genuine human rights advocates, their location alone makes it clear that they operate in affiliation with their respective regimes. A brief review of their work confirms it.
1. The Cuban United Nations Association (Havana-based)
- Affiliation: Its leaders include former top communist politicians and diplomats, such as the former Cuban Ambassador to Belgium, Norma Goicochea Estenoz, a key member of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party, Juan Marinello, and a high-ranking communist politician who served under both Batista and Fidel Castro, Carlos Rafael Rodríguez.
- Propaganda: The group openly states it identifies with the Cuban regime, asserting that the Cuban legal order “protects the exercise of civil, political, cultural, economic and social rights”-a blatant misrepresentation of reality. They routinely accuse the US of a “genocidal campaign against Cuba.”
2. Jameh Ehyagaran Teb Sonnati Va Salamat Iranian (Tehran-based)
- Red Flags: Lacks a public website or identifiable leadership, classic indicators of a GONGO that is only activated to spout propaganda during relevant UN debates, such as the UCM and UPR debates.
- Propaganda: Their limited work focuses on anti-UCM rhetoric. They went so far as to claim that “Western countries (commit) medicinal bio-terrorism,” while predictably ignoring the thousands of Iranian protestors harmed by the regime’s own medical neglect and violence.
3. Medical Support Association for Underprivileged Iranian Patients (Tehran-based)
- Red Flags: Practically no publicly available information; their only activity online is related to UCMs, exposing them as a clear regime front-group.
4. Organization for Defending Victims of Violence (Tehran-based)
- Propaganda: Publishes articles that are blatantly anti-US and anti-Israel (labeling Israel as “pure evil”). In contrast, they compiled official quotes to praise Iran, commending its “significant role in the region” and its “innovative and progressive model of a free and inclusive electoral system”-a surreal claim given Iran’s authoritarian system.
5. Charitable Institute for Protecting Social Victims (Tehran-based)
- Propaganda: While they blamed German police for mistreating arrestees in their German UPR submission, their Iran UPR submission makes zero mention of Iranian police blinding or beating protestors. It focuses exclusively on the impact of UCMs.
As stated by the UN Debate:
Russia: Large-scale and uncontrolled use by Western countries of unilateral coercive measures (UCMs) contradict the UN’s fundamental human rights documents.
Islamic Republic of Iran: Financial and trade sanctions are unlawful, and contrary to the Charter of the United Nations.
UN Rapporteur Alena Douhan: It is a privilege for me to participate today in the biennial panel meeting on the impact of unilateral sanctions. Unilateral sanctions regimes violate fundamental human rights, the right to life, right to decent life, freedom from torture, prohibition of discrimination…
UN Rights Chief Volker Turk: Unilateral coercive measures that are inconsistent with international law pose serious risks to the enjoyment of human rights.
Venezuela: Unilateral coercive measures are counter to the United Nations Charter and international law, and are applied as weapons of war.
Cuba: The economic, commercial, financial blockade imposed by the US government has devastating effects on all sectors of Cuban society, in particular, on the right to food.
Pakistan: On unilateral coercive measures (UCMs), Pakistan has consistently maintained that they contravene the UN Charter.
China: UCMs are pure and simple hegemony.
Hillel Neuer, UN Watch:
Madam Chair, this panel is premised on the idea that the greatest threat to human rights today comes from Western sanctions.
In truth, the gravest assault on human dignity comes from authoritarian governments that oppress, jail, and torture their own people.
And so we ask this panel, Is it right that the Special Rapporteur, Ms Douhan, has traveled to Qatar, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Iran, Syria and China, not to defend the victims of these dictatorships, but to lend a UN imprimatur to the propaganda of the oppressors?
Ms Douhan, when the people of Venezuela cried out under Maduro’s misrule, when Syrians were bombed and slaughtered by Assad, when Iranian women were beaten for showing their hair, what was your response? To blame the West and excuse the despots.
Why did your office get $50,000 from Qatar? Why $265,000 from Russia? Why $980,000 from China? Who believes that Sheik Tamim, Vladimir, Putin and Xi Jinping gave $1.3 million to help human rights victims?
And let us be clear, sanctions are not the cause of hunger in Cuba, it comes from a one party system that, for decades, has denied its people freedom, choice, and prosperity.
Ordinary Cubans know it is not sanctions that prevent them from growing food freely or importing without state control, it’s their rulers in Havana.
The UN should be defending victims, not enabling their oppressors. By turning this council into a platform against the West, today’s discussion betrays its mandate.
If we care about human rights, let us first demand accountability from the governments that oppress their own people. I thank you. Vice
President: I cannot fail to notice that we have here derogative language or remarks, and that some of them are personal in nature. This is not acceptable in this forum. No personal attacks against mandate holders should be made in this setting, and I will now continue with the speakers list.
Cuba: Thank you Vice President. Cuba categorically rejects the offensive, out-of-order, politicized comments by UN Watch, a so-called NGO, which, far from constructively contributing to the work of the council, dedicates itself systematically to manipulation, provocation, and insulting sovereign states. It is shameful and unacceptable…
