this post was submitted on 25 Mar 2024
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Amnesty is not a news source. They are fundraising, here. The article is devoid of necessary contextual information.
UN Commission executive boards are elected not appointed positions. In some UN bodies, chairs rotate in alphabetical order, but not this one. Maybe there was a midterm vacancy and the seat was filled by an appointment process? What is that process? When is the earliest the seat could be recalled?
I can't find anything about their process.
There's really not much about it, the UN page is here: https://www.un.org/en/global-issues/gender-equality
Mostly they seem to have conferences every decade or so and occasionally declare a "International day for X". Seems like a PR kind of thing to me.
But at any rate it's a bad look for the UN. Indicates a dysfunction in the organization that whatever process they have allowed this to happen. I mean it looks like it's a PR campaign that actually makes them look bad. If Guterres was competent he'd shut the thing down entirely and start another one that didn't suck. But since he's an idiot and he will probably just say it's somehow Israel's fault.
Page 22 re: election of officers.
https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/n97/775/21/pdf/n9777521.pdf
It is providing news.
Their website has a donate button. This article doesn't ask for donations, although it does advertise another Amnesty report.
What? They literally aren't journalists and this literally isn't journalism. It's click bait to get people to click that donate button.
They may not be journalists, but this certainly is news.
"They campaign against abuses of human rights worldwide."
The information shared seems to be high-quality and relevant to their cause. It certainly isn't "10 bad things about Saudi Arabia, number 7 will shock you".
Yeah it's not serious news for serious people. It's click bait. Not as transparent as your example perhaps, but not much different.
If the article is clickbate then it should be easy to respond to the serious points (for serious people) that:-
Saudi Arabia’s 2022 Personal Status Law, creates gender-based discrimination in
Saudi Arabia’s authorities supress freedom of expression including expressing support (ie tweeting about) for women’s rights.
Saudi Arabia must demonstrate its commitment through concrete actions domestically.
Those points are all true as far as I know.
Here you go, here's what an actual article on this looks like.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/27/saudi-arabia-un-womens-rights-commission
Ironically your preferred article uses Amnesty "clickbait" International as one of it's sources.
Right at the top of the guardian's website it says "Support us now". Doesn't that, by your definition, make it clickbait?
Uhhh, why are you so hostile? I didn't make up the concept of good journalism versus sensational shit.
This the the part I am talking about. None of these details are included in Amnesty's blog post, because it cuts against the outrage. Can't very well lose your shit over it if nobody else wants the chair. I think it's safe to say that anyone concerned about this now do their part to make sure the body has the impetus to contest the seat, next time. Perhaps there is more to the story. Perhaps this was a protest? Perhaps spring in the body with no time to mount a challenge? I don't know.
Because you lumped a well respected human rights NGO in with buzzfeed.
You were attacking the messenger, not the message, which made me think you were defending SA's appalling human rights record. But you've admitted what was written is correct so I'm much less hostile now.
In this case the "sensational shit" was one of the sources that the good journalism was based on.
Is it really relevant that the seat was won uncontested? Not to an organisation who's sole purpose is to highlight human rights abuses. Not to OP. OP could have linked to the Guardian's article rather than Amnesty's but the point they are making about hypocrisy remains.
I think Amnesty is half shit. This is what they do. They spread half truths and outrage bait and raise money with it. They use some of that money to do some great and important work. They also use some of that money to spread the shit.
This article was not published to inform people. It was published to outrage people and raise money off it. Amnesty is glad this dude got appointed. 🤑
Except they don't, they even link to a more detailed article that includes many more reference links for more information. Not to mention entire reports about the human rights abuses in detail.
There is no evidence they 'spread half truths' or 'outrage bait.' Sounds like you just want to discredit them because the human rights abuses they report about Israel make you uncomfortable.
The evidence is in this thread. Try and keep up. They make me uncomfortable because they are half truths. This how Amnesty funds itself. No shite they find human rights abuses wherever they look. Their job is not to vindicate people, it's to accuse them. Surgeons where I'm from always find a reason to operate. To hammers, everything is a nail. I find your approach to evaluating Amnesty's credibility as a news publisher to be shallow and self serving.
So you're mad that a Human Rights Organization is reporting on the details of Human Rights abuses Saudi Arabia has institutionalized to oppress women, showing exactly why the UN appointing Saudi Arabia is a terrible decision. It's a report on Saudi Arabia, not the UN.
The Guardian is a news outlet reporting on the UN Decision, it makes sense they report on the details of the UN proceedings, and quote Amnesty on the human rights violations.
What part of the Amnesty report is a half-truth? They are reporting on exactly what human rights abuses Saudi Arabia has committed and how. This is not a general news outlet like The Guardian or The Intercept. Amnesty reports on human rights. They don't report anything on without substantial evidence either.
Who are they vindicating here? It's certainly not Saudi Arabia, they talk about how they are guilty of oppressing women. It's not the UN either, they detail exactly how this decision goes against the UN charter.
Your specialty is being emotionally over reactive and putting words in my mouth that I did not say.
If you can't see the literal language I quoted from the guardian article that was entirely omitted from the Amnesty blog post, and you don't see what the problem is with treating Amnesty as journalism, than you are beyond redemption and your media literacy is just not adequate.
And btw, Saudi Arabia is a great example of how your buddies in Hamas plan to rule over all of the Levant after for real genociding all the Jews and Christians and installing an Islamic caliphate: theocracies cannot be a legitimate source of human rights since any concept of religious law is entirely made up by the people in charge of it and anyone can claim to be the next prophet.
Nothing in the Guardian article contradicts or discredits the Amnesty article, in fact it uses Amnesty as a source. You'll notice how the HRW article the guardian also sources also doesn't go into the details of the UN appointing Saudi Arabia. That's because human rights organizations focus on reporting about human rights. The details of how the UN appointed Saudi Arabia despite their oppression of women, does not change the reality that Saudi Arabia oppresses women. The human rights organizations are reporting on that reality of oppression, because that's the focus of a human rights organization.
I support a One-State Solution with equal rights for both Israelis and Palestinians. Palestinians do have a right to armed resistance against Apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and settler Colonialism. Hostilities need to end.