In September 2024, Mai Sato, the newly appointed UN Special Rapporteur on the scenario of human rights within the Islamic Republic of Iran, submitted her first report back to the General Assembly. This report gives a complete imaginative and prescient and descriptions key priorities for her mission. It additionally displays the Islamic Republic of Iran’s response to worldwide scrutiny of the nation’s human rights report. This article analyzes key points of Ms. Sato’s report, the priorities she recognized, and the broader context during which these points play out.
Mandate and Iran’s response
The mandate given to the Special Rapporteur was established by the Human Rights Council in decision A/HRC/RES55/19. Sato, who began in August 2024, is accountable for monitoring, investigating and reporting human rights violations in Iran. Her report emphasizes a twin method: addressing the obligations of the Iranian authorities (known as “obligors”) and defending the rights of Iranian residents (known as “rights holders”).
Iran’s response to the mission was eminently defensive. As famous within the report, the Iranian authorities has reiterated its dedication to defending human rights and highlights what it sees as substantial progress on this space. However, it additionally criticizes the imposition of “Western values” by worldwide human rights organizations. Iran says these calls for typically contradict the Islamic requirements and ideas that govern the nation. Nevertheless, Mr. Sato known as on Iran to interact extra brazenly with the mission and permit entry to the nation, a request that has been repeatedly rejected since 2011.
Key priorities: transparency, gender and proper to life
Data transparency and the suitable to know the reality
One of the elemental challenges in assessing human rights in Iran is the shortage of clear and dependable knowledge. The report highlights {that a} lack of information makes it tough to measure progress or deterioration in human rights safety. The Special Rapporteur has not been allowed to go to Iran since his mandate resumed in 2011, and the final such go to was in 1996. Lack of entry, mixed with retaliation towards victims and human rights defenders who report violations, creates an surroundings during which: Transparency shall be severely compromised. Sato emphasizes that entry to knowledge and fact is a elementary proper below worldwide human rights regulation, and her mission focuses on advocating for better transparency within the Iranian authorities.
gender and intersectionality
The remedy of girls in Iran has lengthy been a priority, however the scenario has worsened lately, significantly with the rise of the Women, Life, Freedom motion. The report highlights the state’s use of deadly pressure and arbitrary detention in response to the motion, significantly focusing on girls and human rights defenders. One of probably the most urgent points on this context is the Chastity and Hijab Bill, which strengthens the duty of public veiling for girls and ladies. Sato acknowledges Iran’s place that the hijab is a type of safety for girls, however argues that imposing such legal guidelines violates girls’s autonomy and proper to freely take part in society.
Sato’s mandate shall be to undertake a gender-based method, recognizing the disproportionate affect of human rights violations on girls, particularly ethnic, non secular and sexual minorities. She factors out that gender equality is essential not just for girls’s rights but in addition for broader social and financial growth. Moreover, Iran’s failure to ratify the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination towards Women (CEDAW) and its dismal rating of 143rd out of 146 nations on the Global Gender Gap Index are pressing points on this space. This highlights the necessity for motion.
proper to stay
Perhaps probably the most worrying situation raised on this report is the rise in executions in Iran, with at the least 93 individuals executed in August 2024 alone. Many of those executions had been for drug-related crimes, which don’t meet the standards for the “most severe crime” that warrants the loss of life penalty below worldwide regulation. The Iranian authorities’s widespread use of the loss of life penalty violates worldwide human rights requirements, together with for vaguely outlined crimes resembling “spreading corruption on earth” and “waging battle towards God.”
Sato argues that violations of the suitable to life typically replicate broader institutional failures, resembling insufficient authorized safety, torture, and the suppression of civil and political rights. Her position will concentrate on investigating these violations and advocating for accountability and justice for victims.
Iran’s broader human rights scenario
The report additionally touches on quite a lot of different human rights points that stay unresolved in Iran. These embrace persecution of spiritual and ethnic minorities, lack of judicial independence, torture and merciless remedy of detainees, and repression of human rights defenders and civil society activists.
Despite a number of authorized reforms, together with the 2013 modification to the Islamic Penal Code and the 2017 modification to the Illegal Drugs Control Law, there was restricted progress in addressing these deep-seated points. The continuation of systematic human rights violations over the previous 40 years, relationship again to Andrés Aguilar’s 1984 report, highlights the deep-seated nature of those issues.
Call for worldwide cooperation
Sato’s report concludes with a name for better worldwide cooperation to deal with Iran’s human rights scenario. She encourages Member States, civil society and UN companies to help her mission and have interaction in constructive dialogue with Iran. He additionally known as on Iran to permit the Special Rapporteur and different human rights mechanisms unrestricted entry to Iran, stressing that such cooperation is important to constructing belief and selling human rights in Iran.
conclusion
Mai Sato’s first report as UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Iran outlines a transparent and targeted agenda to deal with the nation’s most urgent human rights points. With her emphasis on transparency, gender equality, and the suitable to life, she presents a roadmap to conducting her mission, whereas additionally highlighting the challenges posed by Iran’s resistance to worldwide scrutiny. As the worldwide neighborhood continues to observe the scenario in Iran, Sato’s report has turn out to be an essential doc defending the rights of the Iranian individuals and holding the federal government accountable for its human rights obligations.