Iran’s distinguished Iranian lawyer and Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr. Shirin Ebadi has accused UNICEF of negligence in caring for susceptible kids in Iran and has written a grievance to the United Nations Children’s Fund on the problem.
Ebadi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003 for her pioneering work selling Iran’s kids’s rights, ladies’s rights and refugee rights.
“The Iranian UNICEF workplace does little to assist the kids,” Evadi instructed Kayhan’s Life in an unique interview. “It is necessary to notice that regardless of repeated reminders to UNICEF through the shootings (many individuals had been killed or injured) of people underneath the age of 18 through the protest of ‘ladies, life, freedom’, there was no significant response. ”
“The objective of publishing this assertion is just not solely to carry UNICEF accountable, but in addition to tell Iranian residents of the negligence of sure worldwide organizations,” the Nobel Prize winner added.
The Islamic Republic has executed round 70 youngster offenders since 2010, Iran’s Human Rights says
She mentioned comparable considerations had been raised with UNICEF Iran for the execution of people who had been minors on the time of the alleged crime, however the group has by no means publicly expressed assist for these kids.
“In a earlier dialogue with representatives of Iranian UNICEF years in the past, they explicitly said that such points lie outdoors their legal responsibility,” she mentioned.
UNICEF declined to remark when contacted by Kaihan Life relating to Ebadi’s allegations.
Ebadi’s May 29 grievance letter seen by Kayhan Life detailed varied considerations about UNICEF’s conduct in Iran and accused youngster welfare organisations of being silent in regards to the Islamic Republic of kid rights violations.
“The department of that group in Iran has been energetic for years, and for causes that aren’t clear to me and my fellow folks, it has not taken efficient motion to satisfy its authorized obligations,” the letter to the United Nations mentioned. “There are many instances the place UNICEF ought to have protested in Iran, from protesting the executions of criminals underneath the age of 18, which have been reported a number of instances to the organisation, to ignoring the well being and training of youngsters and the contents of academic books.”
Iran’s Islamic Republic receives persistently low scores on the worldwide youngster rights index. In 2024, it ranked 91 out of 120 nations on the Child Rights Index, which measures the standing of youngsters’s rights in nations world wide.
He is at present essentially the most prolific youngster executioner on the planet, with over 160 kids at present on dying row inmates.
Violence towards kids in Iranian protests should be investigated, kids say
The Iranian authorities has been criticized by human rights teams for permitting youngster marriages within the nation. The 9-year-old Iranian woman can get married underneath Sharia legislation, and youngster marriages have elevated sharply since 2017, the federal government division has identified.
From 2014 to 2022, almost 1.1 million marriages involving a woman had been registered in Iran. This consists of 13,500 folks concerned with women underneath the age of 13, however these numbers might be conservative.
According to the National Citizen Registration Agency (NOCR), in 2021, moms between the ages of 10 and 19 had an estimated 69,103 infants. In the identical 12 months, moms aged 10-14 years previous had 1,474 infants.
Sexual abuse in Iranian juveniles is extremely underreported, with restricted information of kid sexual abuse (CSA) and inconsistent nationwide. A research revealed in July 2022 by the University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation Sciences in Tehran estimated that the prevalence of kid abuse in Iran is estimated to be between 1.5% and 32.5%, with an estimated 25% of boys at Yaz metropolis secondary faculties affected by CSA.
At least 70 kids had been killed in brutal crackdowns by safety forces within the 2022 protests following the dying of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini throughout police custody. Hundreds of youngsters had been additionally detained, injured and tortured by state authorities through the demonstrations.
“We wish to use this chance to call the few kids who had been arrested through the protests of Mahsa Amini and remained in jail.
The letter to the UN Children’s Fund, which was despatched to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the UN Committee on Facts, accusing the Islamic Republic of utilizing kids to strain political opposition to comply with the federal government’s calls for.
“One of the ways in which Iran’s Islamic Republic makes use of to strain residents and political activists is to abuse kids. In this manner, they ship their kids to jail pretending to be false, with the intention to power their father or mom to stay silent or cooperate with the federal government,” the letter mentioned. “Submitting this case with false accusations is solely meant to harass the households of this civic activist with the intention to power them to proceed working collectively in silence.”
Shirin Ebadi. Reuters
In the letter, Ebadi highlighted the violent incident towards 17-year-old Nima Kandan, the son of human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotode and imprisoned activist Reza Kandan. According to a publish posted on Sotoudeh’s Instagram account, Nima was crushed and injured by jail guards on the notorious Evin Prison throughout a go to to see his father in January.
Kandan was sentenced to 5 years in a one-year time period for “meeting and conspiracy towards nationwide safety” and “propaganda actions towards the Islamic Republic.”
“The Committee on Child Rights strongly condemns the intense violation of kid rights happening in Iran within the context of peaceable protests following the dying of Mahsa Amini’s custody of custody on September 16, 2022,” the committee mentioned. “Reliable experiences present that some kids had been shot lifeless with dwell ammunition, whereas others died on account of be-hitting. Many households reported that regardless of their loss, they had been pressured to exempt safety forces by declaring that they dedicated suicide and made false confessions.”