The Independent United Nations Fact-Finding Mission (IFFM), which is investigating allegations of significant human rights abuses within the Islamic Republic of Iran, mentioned in its first report back to the United Nations General Assembly that perpetrators of so-called honor killings within the nation take pleasure in impunity.
Honor killings happen when a lady or woman is killed, normally by a member of the family, after being accused of bringing disgrace on her household. Women and ladies have been killed for refusing to marry, for having an affair, or for marrying somebody their household does not like. Honor killings are extraordinarily troublesome to detect and are underreported.
“The mission reported that ‘honor killings’ and different types of gender-based violence proceed with impunity,” the IFFM mentioned in an announcement on October 31. The workforce identified that at the very least 60 instances of honor killings occurred in Iran between March 2025 and September 2025, primarily based on dependable data.
IFFM Chair Sarah Hossain mentioned on October 31 on the United Nations General Assembly headquarters in New York that “denial of justice isn’t impartial.” “Failing to deal with injustice prolongs the struggling of victims and undermines States’ obligations below worldwide human rights legislation to make sure accountability, fact, justice and reparation.”
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“The danger of turning into a sufferer of honor-based crimes is larger for women and younger girls in conventional, poor, rural areas of Iran, particularly Kurdish areas. However, honor-based crimes may happen in city areas, and are mostly reported in Tehran province,” the memo mentioned. “Islamic legislation offers people the precise to hunt retribution in sort (loss of life penalty) for homicide. However, Islamic Penal Code (IPC) doesn’t particularly criminalize ‘honor’ crimes.”
In most honor killings, husbands had been recorded as perpetrators, adopted by fathers, brothers, and different male relations. At the press convention, she defined how girls are pushed to loss of life by suicide.
Lawyers who characterize Iranian girls who’ve been assaulted by their husbands or male relations report issue securing justice for victims.
“Iranian legislation doesn’t defend girls who’ve been assaulted. I skilled a legal case in Iran the place my husband attacked a lady, so I filed a case in court docket and the decide sided with my husband,” exiled Iranian lawyer Foraf Sheikhoreslami Batani advised Kayhan Life. “Sometimes they had been profitable, however these instances had been very uncommon as a result of the legal guidelines of Iran’s civil and legal courts are caught up to now and are very problematic.”
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Gori Korfkan, a toddler bride accused of killing her husband on the age of 18 after years of bodily violence, was sentenced to loss of life in May 2018, in keeping with an October 6 report by the Iranian Human Rights Group (IHR). Kokan was pressured into marriage together with her cousin when she was 12 years outdated and gave start to a son a yr later with out medical help. During her being pregnant, she was pressured to do exhausting labor on her husband’s farm, and was repeatedly bodily assaulted by her husband, who prevented her from having contact together with her household.
Batani, who labored as a human rights lawyer in Iran, fled the nation after being sentenced to 10 years in jail for defending the Women, Life, Freedom motion on social media as a part of her job. She now lives in France and continues to work with worldwide human rights organizations equivalent to Germany-based Stop Honor Killings, which conducts analysis on violence towards girls and ladies in Iran.
A January 2025 report printed by Stop Honor Killings estimates that there shall be 51 murders in 2024, with the typical age of the victims being 32 years outdated.
“Triggers for such murders could embody refusing an organized marriage, a romantic relationship disapproved of by the household, searching for a divorce, selecting a profession, touring with out permission, and even being a sufferer of sexual assault,” the report mentioned. “Many of those killings are primarily based on mere suspicion and there’s no proof to justify prices.”