UN Watch pointed out how Saudi Arabia’s position on the Human Rights Council gave the repressive regime the privilege of voting on and influencing various resolutions that affected the rights of women worldwide, including the ending of gender-based discrimination, and domestic violence laws—many of which it is openly opposed to. He said in a separate interview that the vote “definitely has the power of sending a message” to Saudi women by “putting their oppressor in a position of power and influence when it comes to women’s rights.”

Rothna Begum, a women’s-rights researcher at Human Rights Watch, called the decision “shocking;” Medea Benjamin, co-founder of global women’s rights organization Code Pink, called it “disheartening and so revolting;” and one Saudi woman told Newsweek she felt “betrayed and kind of invisible.” “There’s no way they could know what women in Saudi Arabia go through every day,” she said of those responsible for voting the country in. “Every Saudi woman must have a male guardian who makes all critical decisions on her behalf, controlling a woman’s life from her birth until death,” Neuer said, calling the vote a “black day for women’s rights, and for all human rights.”

Saudi Arabia also made headlines in March for launching a “Girls Council” that had no girls on it. Geneva-based human rights group UN Watch condemned the country’s election to the commission, saying Saudi Arabia is “the world’s most misogynistic regime.”

“Electing Saudi Arabia to protect women’s rights is like making an arsonist into the town fire chief,” Hillel Neuer, executive director of the Geneva-based human rights group, said in a statement.
Saudi Arabia is among twelve countries newly elected to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, despite the nation's conflicts with women's rights.