The Human Rights Council (HRC) is an international body within the United Nations that is tasked with, you guessed it, promoting and protecting human rights around the world. It might come as a shock that recently the UN has decided to appoint Saudi Arabia’s Ambassador Faisal bin Hassan Trad to chair a key five-nation human rights committee that interviews future experts to report on matters including violence against women and arbitrary detention. Curiously enough, if you are a woman in the monarchy of Saudi Arabia, you will be punished with lashing if you are caught driving . If you were gang raped by seven men, expect a punishment of 200 lashes for being without a male family member. Don’t worry, you might later be graced with a pardon. Ali Mohammed Al-Nimr, 17, who is due to be beheaded and crucified for protesting for democracy, and liberal blogger Raif Badawi, sentenced to ten years in jail and 1,000 lashes for criticizing the Saudi religious police, were not. How does a country with a government that has beheaded more people than ISIS this year achieve this honour? Has Saudi Arabia secretly been planting seeds of peace throughout the Middle East? Not quite. Is the UN rewarding Saudi Arabia’s supposed admittance of over 100,000 Syrian refugees? Perhaps, except they have yet to accept a single one. Maybe it has something to do with their fellow HRC members Venezuela, Algeria, and Qatar - all places where I would not be able to write an article like this one. While the UN’s decision might come as a shock to many people, it actually aligns perfectly with the history of the organization.The truth is that the UN has long been plagued with hypocrisy, corruption, and inaction. In 2007, Sudan chaired a committee on human rights even as its president Omar Bashir was under investigation (and was later charged) with not one, but three crimes of genocide in Darfur for the massacre of 400,000 people. Moreover, it was the International Criminal Court that charged Bashir - not the UN. More recently, in 2013, as Iran was funding and arming its terror proxies in Lebanon, Syria, and Gaza, expanding its nuclear program, and shouting “death to America” on the streets, it was given a senior seat on the Nuclear Disarmament Committee. After the recent nuclear deal with Iran, the supreme Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei claimed that Israel will not exist in 25 years. He is clearly not interested in establishing and maintaining world peace, especially in the Middle East.One of the biggest criticisms of the UN is its obsession with the Jewish state. Year after year the UN releases resolutions condemning Israel, but is very hesitant to condemn other belligerents. Take Syria, for example. In the past four years, President Bashar al-Assad has been responsible for the deaths of more than 250,000 Syrians. As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remarked recently, that is more than 10 times the amount of Israelis and Palestinians killed in the past century combined. This includes terrorists, suicide bombers, soldiers, and civilians. In the past year, more than twenty resolutions have been passed against the state of Israel, but merely one has been passed against Syria. In fact, in its nine years of existence, the HRC has passed more resolutions against Israel than the rest of the world combined. Criticism against countries like Russia, North Korea, Syria, Iran, Sudan, and Saudi Arabia pale in comparison. These governments that impose forced child labor, hang, behead, and crucify homosexuals, stone women to death for adultery, and imprison musicians and political dissidents are apparently not nearly as bad as a country defending itself from terror tunnels and 4,500 rockets in less than 50 days. In fact, some of these countries are already a part of the HRC. In 1976, when German and Palestinian terrorists hijacked an Air France plane, Ugandan dictator Idi Amin gave them his Entebbe airport for asylum. The terrorists threatened to kill all the Israelis on board, but Israel had sent a commando rescue team, successfully saving all but three passengers. Who did the UN condemn? Israel, for breaching Uganda’s sovereignty.Corruption has long been at the core of the UN. This was clear in the 90s when the organization turned a blind eye to numerous reports of UN “peacekeeping” forces raping children in Bosnia, Kosovo, Cambodia, Haiti, and Mozambique. It was clear when they found 20 missiles in their UN schools in Gaza and handed them back to the terrorist organization Hamas last year. Unfortunately, like many governments around the world, the UN is a game of politics. Ambassadors vote based on bloc leader decisions instead of independent thought, secretly agree to vote for each other, and just as in the case of FIFA president Sepp Blatter, money plays a big role. Leaders are driven by motives that serve their personal gain instead of the greater good. It comes as no surprise, then, that prior to Saudi Arabia’s appointment, it pledged no less than 100,000 USD to the HRC (and probably closer to a million according to removed Wikileaks links), or that the Saudi and British ambassadors met behind curtains and agreed to trade votes. So what? Do you move on with your lives as the Sepp Blatters of the UN refuse to step down? Do you shrug when the Netanyahus of the world win their fourth election and build more settlements? Do you stand by and let the world’s worst offenders preach to you about human rights? Do you soothe your unease by telling yourself that this is not relevant to you, not your problem? This is not what I expect of you. This is not what the world expects of you. It is my sincere wish that as students of NYU Shanghai we set out to accomplish our university’s mission and genuinely become “global citizens of the world,” not global citizens of our wallets. Be champions of peace and justice, proudly carrying the NYU torch of light, using it to illuminate whatever darkness you may encounter in life. Whether you are pursuing business or politics, science or art, corruption and malevolence can manifest anywhere. Use what you learn in this institution to fight them. Expand your horizons and talk to your multinational friends to educate yourself about the problems their countries face. Make their problems your problems. “All that is needed for evil to triumph is that good men [and women] do nothing.” - Edmund Burke.

Recommended:Eleven things women in Saudi Arabia cannot doWhy the Iran deal is terribleTop failures of the UNOperation EntebbeSign an online petition to remove Saudi Arabia from the HRCWhat Saudi Arabia really thinks of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights This article was written by Omer Cohen. Send an email to [email protected] to get in touch. Photo Credit: US Department of State, US Public Domain