Tuesday night, November 15, 2016, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution on the violations of human rights in Iran with 85 favorable votes.
The resolution expressed “serious concern at the alarmingly high frequency of the imposition and carrying-out of the death penalty” and called on the Iranian regime “to abolish, in law and in practice, public executions”, “to cease enforced disappearances”, “address the poor conditions of prisons, to eliminate the denial of access to adequate medical treatment and the consequent risk of death faced by prisoners”, and “to end widespread and serious restrictions, in law and in practice, on the right to freedom of expression, opinion, association and peaceful assembly, both online and offline, including by ending the harassment, intimidation and persecution of political opponents, human rights defenders, women’s and minority rights activists…”
In Article 14, the resolution strongly urged the Iranian regime “to eliminate, in law and in practice, all forms of discrimination and other human rights violations against women and girls, including with respect to the right to freedom of movement, the right to enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health and the right to work, to take measures to ensure protection for women and girls against violence and their equal protection and access to justice, to address the concerning incidence of child, early and forced marriage, as recommended by the Committee on the Rights of the Child, to promote, support and enable women’s participation in leadership and decision-making processes and, while recognizing the high enrolment of women in all levels of education in the Islamic Republic of Iran, to lift restrictions on women’s equal access to all aspects of education and women’s equal participation in the labour market and in all aspects of economic, cultural, social and political life.”
The Iranian Resistance’s President-elect Maryam Rajavi welcomed the UNGA Third Committee’s adoption of the resolution on human rights in Iran. She said, “The time has come for the international community to end the barbaric and systematic violations of human rights in Iran, particularly the mass executions, and undertake practical and effective measures. Inaction vis-à-vis a regime that has 120,000 political executions on its record –including the massacre of 30,000 political prisoners in 1988– is a flagrant violation of the values and principles the United Nations Organization has been founded on.
This is the 63rd UN resolution censuring human rights abuses in Iran. Despite the clerical regime’s extensive efforts and schemes to prevent its adoption, the resolution received higher favorable votes compared to the General Assembly’s resolution last year, with nine more countries voting in favor of it.
