41 Human Rights Organizations Call for Extension of UN Special Rapporteur’s Mandate on Iran
41 human rights organizations have called for an extension of the United Nations Special Rapporteur’s mandate on human rights in Iran through a letter.
On Monday, March 17, and today, Tuesday, March 18, the UN Human Rights Council held a session in Geneva to review the human rights situation in Iran.
Mai Sato, the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in Iran, expressed serious concerns about widespread human rights violations in Iran in a report released on March 12. In this report, she emphasized systematic discrimination against women and minorities, Christian citizens and Bahá’ís, and examined the suppression of protesters, increased executions, violence against women, gender-based discrimination, and the poor conditions of prisoners.
Now, 41 human rights organizations, along with Article 18, have sent a letter to the UN Human Rights Council during this session, calling for an extension of Mai Sato’s mandate as the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in Iran, and emphasizing the continuation of an independent international investigative mechanism to expand the work of the Fact-Finding Committee.
In this letter, while referring to widespread human rights violations in Iran, it states: “This mechanism should have a broad mandate that includes investigating, collecting, and preserving evidence related to patterns of recent and ongoing serious human rights violations and crimes under international law, as well as pursuing necessary measures for accountability.
The Fact-Finding Committee has confirmed that widespread human rights violations and the suppression of minorities, women, and protesters continue in Iran. Iranian authorities have not only failed to respond to demands for justice and truth, but have intensified the suppression of victims, human rights defenders, and independent observers.
The suppression of the “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests is part of a continuous pattern of state repression. Discrimination against women, minorities, and sexual minorities is occurring not only during protests, but also in daily life. Victims and survivors of past and ongoing human rights violations and crimes under international law in Iran require a comprehensive approach that includes reporting, immediate intervention, investigations, legal analysis, and identification of perpetrators of these crimes to provide a real prospect for the realization of human rights, justice, truth, and reparations in Iran.
We call on your government to respond to this need. We also ask you to publicly condemn serious and ongoing human rights violations by the Islamic Republic of Iran and call for their immediate cessation. Furthermore, we ask you to support continued efforts to achieve justice and uphold the rights of the Iranian people.”
Human rights lawyer Shirin Ebadi is also among the signatories of this letter. Other signatories of the letter have also emphasized the importance of the Fact-Finding Committee’s activities alongside the UN Special Rapporteur. The Fact-Finding Committee announced last year (1402 in the Islamic calendar) that the Islamic Republic committed many crimes against humanity while suppressing protests in 1401, and severely tortured prisoners from religious, ethnic, and religious minorities.
The signatories of this letter added: “The work of the International Fact-Finding Mission and the UN Special Rapporteur over the past two years demonstrates the importance of these two mandates, which are different but complementary to each other, in addressing the long-standing human rights crisis and impunity in the Islamic Republic.”
