[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 3]
[House]
[Pages 3987-3988]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                  THE HYPOCRISY OF THE UNITED NATIONS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from 
North Carolina (Ms. Foxx) for 5 minutes.
  Ms. FOXX. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to talk about the United Nations 
and what can only be described as its increasingly outrageous actions 
on the world stage. How else would you describe planning a conference 
on gender equality, feminism, and sexual violence that invited only men 
to participate? or telling the Catholic Church that its pro-life stance 
equals psychological torture?
  Well, last week, the United Nations really went off the deep end when 
its Commission on the Status of Women adopted a resolution that singles 
out and condemns Israel for violating the rights of women. That's 
right. This Commission condemned a country that has guaranteed women 
equality in work, education, health, and social welfare for more than 
60 years. It denounced a country where rape, including spousal rape, is 
a felony punishable by 16 years in prison, whose Ministry of Social 
Affairs operates battered women's shelters and a hotline for reporting 
abuse and whose parliament passed nearly 50 initiatives to promote 
gender equality and empower women over the past 4 years. It accused the 
only country in the Middle East that fully respects the rights of women 
with violating the rights of women.
  To say I wholeheartedly disagree with this fiction the U.N. has 
concocted would be an understatement. Let's look at the facts.

[[Page 3988]]

  On its Web site, the Commission lists selected grim statistics for 
the status of women in the world: They inform us that one in three 
women have experienced physical or sexual violence; they let us know 
that 120 million girls have been forced into intercourse or other 
sexual acts at some point in their lives; and they tell us 133 million 
women and girls have undergone female genital mutilation.
  When you consider those numbers, it is mind-boggling that the 
Commission believes that Israel is the only one of the 193 U.N. member 
states worthy of condemnation for its record on women's rights. How is 
that even possible? Israel's entire population is less than 10 million.
  According to the World Health Organization, nearly 40 percent of all 
murders of women worldwide are carried out by an intimate partner. Yet 
dozens of countries around the world do not have specific laws against 
domestic violence. Where is the Commission's condemnation of Russia and 
Kenya? of Burkina Faso and Pakistan? of Congo and Lesotho? of Niger?
  Why didn't the Commission cite Sudan, where the legal age of marriage 
for girls is 10 years old and 88 percent of women under 50 have 
undergone female genital mutilation?
  Why didn't the Commission condemn Iran, where a woman's testimony is 
only worth half of a man's in court, and rape within marriage is not 
recognized as a criminal offense?
  Where is the censure of India, where statistics show a rape occurs 
every 22 minutes? Why didn't the Commission want to talk about the 
victims in that country, who include a nun in her seventies who was 
gang-raped by a group of bandits when she tried to prevent them from 
committing a robbery in a Christian missionary school, as well as two 
teenaged cousins from a low caste who didn't have a toilet in their 
home and were raped, strangled, and found hanging from a tree because 
they went outside to relieve themselves during the night.
  Why aren't these countries worthy of the same denunciation? You might 
be surprised to learn they all sit on the Commission on the Status of 
Women. That's right. Some of the world worst violators of women's 
rights sit on a commission that calls itself ``the principal global 
intergovernmental body exclusively dedicated to the promotion of gender 
equality and the empowerment of women.''
  It is clear from the facts that this single-minded attack is just the 
latest salvo in the U.N.'s never-ending anti-Israeli agenda, and it is 
time we stand up for our friend and ally.
  As a founding member of the U.N. and a permanent member of the U.N. 
Security Council, United States has a duty to insist on a higher 
standard. The status quo is simply unacceptable.

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