UN Women Is a Disgrace

L ike so many self-described women’s organizations, the United Nations’ “global champion for gender equality,” UN Women, is having a bear of a time trying to figure out how to talk about the wanton sexual violence and abuse of which Hamas is guilty.

A head-spinning example of the efforts by U.N. functionaries to avoid saying anything of substance about Hamas’s ongoing depravity comes to us via CNN during an interview with one of the organization’s functionaries, Sarah Hendriks:

When asked point-blank why the organization has struggled mightily and in full view of the public to condemn Hamas’s actions and Hamas’s actions alone, Hendriks issued a practiced dissimulation that sounds to the untrained ear like a substantive response. But to those familiar with the lingua franca native to talk shops and process-oriented diplomatic initiatives, what Henriks actually said was nothing at all:

UN Women always supports impartial, independent investigations into any serious allegations of gender-based or sexual violence. And within the UN family, these investigations are led by the office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights. And just to provide a little bit of context in terms of UN Women’s role, UN Women specifically provides and has extensive knowledge on gender-based violence, and provides and supports investigations, as we do with all UN Investigations. And so, consequently, in this context and within the UN system, it is the independent International Commission of Inquiry, which for us has the mandate to investigate all alleged violations.

If we clear away the bureaucratized detritus, what Henriks is saying here in the least comprehensible way possible is that UN Women cannot comment on Hamas’s alleged acts of sexual violence, torture, and abuse before a comprehensive investigation into those claims has concluded. That’s consistent with the comment UN Women provided reporters after the organization quietly posted and quickly withdrew a statement condemning Hamas’s attack on Israel nearly seven weeks after the fact. They just don’t want to get ahead of the United Nations on the issue.

That would be a defensible standard if it was consistently observed. But it’s not.

The organization didn’t need a prolonged, comprehensive investigation before it weighed in on a brutal 2014 raid on a Nigerian village in which over 200 young girls were taken captive by the terrorist outfit Boko Haram. “Three weeks ago,” UN Women’s executive director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka wrote, “they were seized in the night by armed men dressed as soldiers who said they were there to protect them.” She added that this “violation of the rights of women and girls on such a scale, no matter who they are and where they are, requires the whole world to stand up and take action.”

Nor is this a standard that was applied to Afghanistan following the restoration of Taliban rule. “Women have a right to peaceful protest and to a life free of violence,” read a statement produced by UN Women interim executive director Pramila Patten less than a month after the Taliban took power in Kabul through violence and intimidation. “I am shocked and outraged by the images of women in Afghanistan being whipped, hit with shock batons and beaten simply for exercising their right to peaceful protest.” Apparently, this verdict was not reached following a multi-week, interagency inquiry spearheaded by the OHCHR.

Nor did UN Women feel obliged to keep mum before its superiors confirmed what all available evidence indicated were Russian atrocities amid Moscow’s war of conquest and subjugation in Ukraine. “I urge the international community, as it rallies in support, to keep women and girls at the center and to ensure that the humanitarian assistance planned and provided is gender-responsive,” read UN Women executive director Sima Bahous’s statement just one week after Russian troops cascaded across Ukraine’s borders. Nor did the organization feel the need to rely on Turtle Bay to confirm incidences of sexual violence attributable to invading Russian forces. “Rape — usually gang rape — sexual torture, forced nudity . . . and other forms of abuse have been documented by journalists, human rights organizations and law enforcement agencies,” said Ukrainian women’s-rights advocate Hrystyna Kit in a statement UN Women publicized.

That same standard has not been applied to Hamas’s conduct. The images of women bleeding from their pelvis as they are ushered off into terrorist captivity, the claims by abductees that women were kept in cages, the testimony from combat medics and first responders about the evidence that women were raped, sexually assaulted, and murdered — sometimes simultaneously — are all unreliable anecdotes. Weird, right?

It’s not as though UN Women has been entirely silent on the conflict in Gaza. It has eagerly documented the plight of the Palestinian people, not because they languish under the misrule of a terrorist enterprise, but because Israel chose to retaliate against the genocidal maniacs who invaded the Jewish state with the intent to murder as many Jews as they could find. No comprehensive investigation preceded UN Women’s October 13 statement condemning Israel for its call on civilians in Gaza to evacuate the northern part of the Strip a day earlier. UN Women had performed all the necessary due process by October 20 when it released the details of its report on the “devastating impact of the crisis in Gaza on women and girls.” By November 11, UN Women had compiled enough data to produce an infographic that “shows how women and girls in Gaza have endured attacks and displacement, as well as social and economic disruptions, since 7 October.” The organization can really act fast when it wants to.

We’re left to conclude that, when it comes to the targets of Hamas’s maniacal violence, UN Women just doesn’t feel much urgency. It’s a strange standard — one that doesn’t seem to apply to any other people or any other nation on earth. Wish we had a word to describe that sort of thing.