On November 20, the United Nations General Assembly Third Committee, whose focus includes humanitarian matters, approved a draft resolution on the deteriorating human rights situation in Iran.
The resolution condemned Iran’s alarming increase in capital punishment cases, noting the Islamic Republic had put people to death “on the basis of forced confessions, and without fair trial and due process.”
The assembly also expressed concern over Iran’s continued imposition of the death penalty against minors and called on Tehran to stop “the widespread and systematic use of arbitrary arrests and detention.”
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei criticized the resolution, calling it a “a great political and moral disgrace for the West.”
“The resolution was a clear sign of reducing the noble concept of human rights to a tool for exerting political pressure on independent nations,” Baghaei said.
As a democratic system, he said, Iran considers itself obligated to protect and promote human rights and fulfill its international obligations based on the principles enshrined in the constitution, the Islamic Republic News Agency reported.
That claim is misleading.
Iran is one of the last countries on Earth to execute individuals who committed crimes as minors. Iran has denied detainees due process, subjected them to torture and secured convictions based on forced confessions. The bulk of the death sentences carried out by Iranian courts are for drug-related offenses.
Thus, Iran systematically violates its obligations as a party to the U.N. International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Adopted in 1966, the ICCPR states that for countries that have not abolished the death penalty:
- “A sentence of death may be imposed only for the most serious crimes;
- [it] shall not be imposed for crimes committed by persons below 18 years of age and shall not be carried out on pregnant women;
- [that] no one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest or detention;
- [and that] detainees shall be treated with humanity, maintain their inherent dignity and right to due process.”
According to the Norway-based Iran Human Rights nonprofit organization, Iran executed at least 70 people convicted of offenses while juveniles between 2010 and 2023.
In August 2022, British human rights group Amnesty International reported that Iran can sentence girls as young as 9, and boys as young as 15, to execution.
Reports indicate that Iranian authorities have subjected female prisoners, including minors, to forced matrimony and rape to prevent them from “going to heaven” after execution, based on the theological belief that virgins go to heaven.
In 2021, U.N. experts estimated there were 85 juvenile offenders on death row in Iran, with the majority of those sentenced to death coming “from marginalized groups.”
Iran Human Rights said the exact number of juveniles on death row in Iranian prisons is unknown due to a “lack of transparency in the Iranian Judiciary.”
Iran has ramped up executions following the 2022-23 mass “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman. Amini died in police custody after Iran’s morality police, the Guidance Patrol, detained her for “improperly” wearing a mandatory headscarf.
Amnesty International said Iran executed 853 people in 2023, a 48% increase over the previous year, to “instill fear in the population and tighten their grip on power.”
Members of the Baluchi ethnic minority, who comprise an estimated 5% of Iran’s population, accounted for 20% of recorded executions, Amnesty International reported.
Iran Human Rights said 56% of those executed were sentenced on drug-related charges, despite the ICCPR’s stance that the death penalty should be imposed only “for the most serious crimes.”
Iran Human Rights also said Iran executed eight “Woman, Life, Freedom” protesters in 2023.
Thirty-four percent of people who Iranian courts sentenced to death were convicted on murder charges.
Iranian authorities also routinely rely on forced confessions, including in capital cases, to secure convictions.
As previously reported by VOA, Iranian state-run media regularly broadcasts forced confessions, even though forced confessions are not admissible in court and are illegal under Iranian and international law.
Victims have described their torturers using lighters, cutters, cattle prods and cables, as well as forcibly injecting them with hallucinatory drugs and subjecting them to years in solitary confinement, to elicit confessions.
Two years before the Amini protests, the International Federation for Human Rights and Justice for Iran reported that Iranian state-owned media had broadcast at least 355 forced confessions between 2009 and 2019.
In August, Amnesty International said Iranian authorities arbitrarily executed Reza Rasaei, a 34-year-old member of the Kurdish ethnic minority, over his connection with the Amini protests following a “grossly unfair trial.”
Amnesty International said Iranian authorities subjected Rasaei to beatings, electric shocks, suffocation and sexual violence to force a confession from him.
Rasaei was the 10th person executed in connection with the Amini protests.
