UN Geneva - Multimedia Newsroom : HRC58 - Human rights in Iran

[Other language spoken]

President, Excellencies, distinguished delegates, ladies and gentlemen, today I present my first report to this Council, a Special Rapporteur on human rights situation in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

I'll highlight four critical areas of concern.

First, the alarming use of the death penalty.

Second, patterns of discrimination in diverse communities.

Third, absence of transparency.

And 4th, the continued silencing of dissent.

I'll start with the death penalty.

The year 2024 has witnessed an unprecedented surge in executions.

Over 900 known executions were identified, the highest since 2015, making Iran by far the highest per capita user of the death penalty globally.

The pace is accelerating, with at least 169 known executions identified in January and February alone.

Should this alarming rate remain consistent, the total number of executions could exceed 1000 this year, a chilling threshold that demands A collective global response.

Half of these known executions were reportedly carried out for drug offences, followed by homicides through Kisas, broadly defined national security offences and sexual offences.

Under international human rights law, these executions fail to meet the most serious crimes threshold.

I take the view that capital punishment reflects a state's willingness to exert lethal violence on its people, rather than serving as an effective deterrent.

Children continue to be sentenced to death.

While I acknowledge the State's efforts to prevent such executions, I must emphasise in the strongest possible terms that individuals who were below the age of 18 at the time of the offence should not be sentenced to death in the 1st place, let alone executed.

My report also highlights the troubling ethnic and religious discrimination in Iran.

This effects religious minorities, including Bahais, Christian converts and Sunni Muslims, as well as ethnic minorities, including Bahais, Baha, sorry, sorry, as well as ethnic minorities such as Azerbaijanis, Kurds, Alwazi Arabs and Baluchi.

And I continue to receive reports of arbitrary detention, unfair trials, and in some cases resulting in death sentences.

Women from these communities face particularly acute challenges, experiencing multiple overlapping forms of discrimination.

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2024 has seen at least 30 known executions of women, the highest number in a decade, and I'd like to use this occasion to draw attention to three women activists currently facing the death penalty.

Charged with broadly defined security offences for their activism and social work, they are Pashan Azizi, Varisha Moradi and Sharia Mohammadi.

This same year, in 2024, at least 179 femicides were documented.

Whether they are women as offenders facing execution or victims of femicides, these women share similar experiences that contributed to their circumstances.

Stories marked by domestic *****, sexual violence and child marriages.

And I think it's important that we understand these killings within the Iran's legal frameworks.

The country still lacks comprehensive law against domestic violence.

The pending bill contains significant gaps, including the failure to criminalise marital **** and economic *****.

Women face systemic discrimination in marriage, divorce and child custody laws, with their testimony valued at half that of men's, a movement restricted by requiring spousal permission.

Finally, the legal distinction between honour related killings and ****** creates a dangerous hierarchy that effectively sanctions lethal violence against women.

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President, distinguished delegates, one of the central findings of my report is the pervasive lack of transparency in this statement.

I deliberately use the term known executions in my statement because the Islamic Republic of Iran continues to withhold official execution figures, with only 10% of known executions announced through official channels.

Iran should enable the reporting of all capital cases, make individual judgements publicly available, and regularly release statistics of death sentences and executions with demographic information.

When a state wields the power to take life, it carries an obligation for full transparency.

On this, I commend civil society organisations for their meticulous data collection and families for providing testimonies despite significant risks.

This opacity extends across multiple domains including ethnic population composition as well as child marriage statistics below the age of 10.

The burden lies with the state to provide transparent data if it wishes to refute any assessments of discriminatory practise.

Finally, I continue to receive reports of harassment and I'll treatment of human rights defenders, artists, civil society organisations and journalists in detention, including denial of medical care for life threatening conditions.

The targeting of their family members also aim to sign us peaceful expression.

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A healthy society treats it as a vital force for growth rather than something to suppress, and I urge the Islamic Republic of Iran to uphold freedom of expression, association and assembly, and then harassment to those exercising these rights.

Despite intense repression, Iranian people continue to demonstrate remarkable resilience, reflecting growing awareness and determination in defending these rights.

I thank you for your attention, Mr.

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Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, we've had the fact finding mission on Iran just completed two years of our investigation into the human rights violations in the context of the protests that broke out in Iran in September 2022 following the unlawful death in custody of Gina Masamini.

Last week we issued our report and today we released further detailed findings in a conference from paper.

We've now collected over 38,000 evidence items and conducted interviews with 287 victims and witnesses.

We've also examined documents and materials produced by the Government of Iran.

This consolidated evidence strengthens our earlier findings that state authorities committed gross human rights violations, including unlawful killings, injuries, arbitrary arrest and detention, torture, sexual and gender based violence including ****, and a wide range of serious fair trial violations.

Some of these violations amounted to crimes against humanity, including persecution on the grounds of gender.

As we previously concluded, while some protesters did engage in isolated incidents of violence, in large part the protests were peaceful and the authorities suppressed them with unnecessary, disproportionate, and unlawful use of force.

This year, our investigations LED us to reach further conclusions regarding the treatment of specific groups during the protests.

We found that ethnic and religious minorities, in particular the Kurds and Bellucci's, and LGBTQ plus persons were particularly targeted in the context of the protests.

With respect to children, we found that even when protesting peacefully, many were killed and severely injured after being fired at with ammunition containing metal pellets.

They were subjected to torture, including ****, and extremely violent treatment and detention while denied access to their parents and lawyers.

Many children, both boys and girls, were left with lifelong injuries, including blinding and lifelong trauma.

Excellencies, I will focus my remaining remarks on three key takeaways from our findings.

First, while the protests have subsided, repression continues and has been heightened both offline and online.

Victims, survivors, and their families are being harassed, intimidated, and threatened for protected conduct, including for their efforts to seek justice and accountability, and even prevented still from mourning their loved ones.

As we've heard, death sentences continue to be issued against those who took part in or supported protests.

We reported earlier that 10 men had been executed in connection with the protests, and another 11 men and three women remain at imminent risk of execution.

The new trend of death penalty against women is deeply worrying, especially in connection with the ongoing repression of women human rights defenders more generally.

Over the last year, we've investigated dozens of cases of women and girls criminalised for their defiance of the mandatory hijab rules.

While the hijab and chastity law does remain paused, aspects of it are already being enforced.

The increased use of surveillance technology, including facial recognition and tracking apps to monitor women's dress and conduct is particularly disturbing.

We've found that women are still being fined, having their vehicles confiscated and subjected to violent arrests in prison sentences, and even in some cases to state sanctioned flogging.

Just last week, four women human rights defenders were arrested in Kurdistan province after peacefully commemorating International Women's Day.

We call for their full protection and the immediate release from detention of Laila Pashaei, Sohaila Mutai, Soma Mohammed Razai and Baran Saeedhi.

Our second key takeaway is that national level efforts to provide redress to victims and survivors remain glaringly inadequate.

The victims and their families who've lodged complaints have faced further harassment, including by being criminalised themselves or subjected to threats.

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We did receive and had contact with Iran's special Committee on the 22 unrest, who informed us of 563 decisions being made in relation to judicial cases against law enforcement officials and also informed us of compensation handed out to to protesters.

However, unfortunately, we received no verifiable details in this regard.

Given the impunity that prevails inside Iran, we believe that accountability must be pursued also internationally in line with the rights and expectations of victims and survivors with whom we've spoken.

Our mission has now collected and analysed material on the identities and responsibility of alleged perpetrators, and this is included in a confidential list which we will provide to the **** Commission on Human Rights.

We've also conducted a mapping of structures of state entities and created profiles of entities, incidents and persons of interest, which will again be available for sharing with any credible legal proceedings.

We've prepared a road map and recommendations for further action, including for establishing A proposed victims fund and continuing to provide direct support to victims and survivors through humanitarian visas and medical and psychosocial support.

Our third and final takeaway from these two years of investigations.

We acknowledge that human rights concerns in Iran are vast and complex and far exceed the temporal and material scope of our mandate.

Many of the serious violations and crimes that have been found have structural and systemic unaddressed root causes, including institutionalised discrimination and endemic impunity.

These make their recurrence likely, if not probable.

The enforcement of discriminatory laws and policies not only enables repression of women and girls, but also other groups on grounds of ethnicity, religion and or political belief.

The suppression of these all equally warrant this Council's attention.

For this reason and in conclusion, we recommend that the Council consider a follow up body.

This could continue to investigate the serious human rights concerns already identified and also accompany accountability efforts.

In this way, the Council can play a vital role in supporting Iranian's right to truth, justice and reparations, and, crucially, to prevent further cycles of violence.

Thank you for your attention.

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[Other language spoken]

President, today we are witnessing another abominable staging in the Human Rights Council at the time when the Council has faced serious questions in the eyes of the word public about its performance in the serious human rights situations, especially the Palestinian issue.

Some malign states have set the stage for discussion on the human rights situation of a civilised and proud country, the Islamic Republic of Iran, a country with an ancient history and civilization, tremendous services to human society and proud resistance against injustice and malicious interferences.

This performance becomes even more ridiculous and offensive when we realise that its main actors are Germany and United Kingdom to countries with the darkest human rights records.

During the past 18 months when the human conscience merge, the situation of the people of Gaza and all the freedom loving people of the world raised their united voice against the crimes of the Israeli regime.

Germany and United Kingdom brazenly supported these crimes while Palestinian women and children were burned in the fire of genocide.

****-ranking officials of these two countries travelled to Tel Aviv to offer sophisticated weapons to the regime.

These two countries are complicit in the crimes of the Israeli regime by providing financial, military and political support to Israel and must be held accountable to the human conscience.

The same countries in a hypocritical behaviour by initiating a resolution against Iran have exposed the insincerity and latter lack of credibility in their so-called advocacy for human rights.

These states lack the legitimacy to engage in human rights discussions concerning other countries.

They only saw the seats of despair in Human Rights Council.

The sponsors of the resolution on which this session is based are themselves among the main violators of human rights of the Iranian people.

They do so either by imposing unilateral coercive measures or by collaborating in and adhering to the enforcement of the United States cruel and unlawful unilateral sanctions against Iran.

They have jeopardised Iranians enjoyment of their economic, social and cultural rights as well as the right to development for both present and future generations.

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President, the Islamic Republic of Iran is strongly adheres to its principals positions of opposing and rejecting both monitoring mechanisms of a Special Rapporteur and fact finding mission and questions their credibility and legitimacy.

Yet my delegation would like to make some clarifications regarding the mandate of the Special Rapporteur.

We don't see any proportionality between the mandate itself and the situation of human rights in our country.

Despite all negativity assumed to the mandate itself, we have behaved each mandate holder according to their method of work and develop compliance to the related code of conduct.

In this regard, we invited the current Special Rapporteur to distance herself from the destructive path and legacy of her predecessor who relentlessly exploited the credibility of the Human Rights Council for his selfish and fame seeking purposes.

We will carefully evaluate the approach and activities of the Special Rapporteur and will adjust our interactions accordingly.

Regarding the fact finding mission that was created on the Germans vanguard, we are strongly ****** this establishment continuation and innovation.

The creation of the mandate of this mission was totally unwarranted and unjustified.

The reports of the mandate during last two years were the compilation of lies and false accusations that were fabricated by anti Iranian terrorist activities activists and their western supporters for deriving their own political instructions on Iran.

Given this approach, the Islamic Republic of Iran is not in a position to cooperate with the fact finding mission.

We will not under any circumstances engage with this mission and if it is adopted in the form outlined in the draught resolution, we will undoubtedly consider the assessment of our cooperation and interactions with the UN human rights mechanisms.

As long as a group of countries, a small group of countries, use HRC to advance their strategic agendas against other nations, we cannot expect the Council to have any meaningful impact on the genuine promotion of human rights.

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President, the Islamic Republic Republic of Iran, as a staunch defender of multilateralism, has clearly demonstrated its commitment to the promotion and protection of human rights.

We respect human rights based on what we have learned from our religion, history and culture.

The government and people of Iran have demonstrated that they will not abandon their beliefs and independence, as well as their strife for global peace and justice.

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HRC58 - Human rights in Iran - 18 March 2025