Official: UN rapporteur to visit Iran to assess sanctions impacts

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the negative impact of the unilateral coercive measures on the enjoyment of human rights will arrive in Iran on Sunday to assess U.S. sanctions’ destructive effects on the country’s people, said a senior rights official.

Kazem Gharibabadi, the Iranian Judiciary chief's deputy for international affairs and secretary of the country's High Council for Human Rights, added the 11-day trip by Alena Douhan is expected to take place after Iran accepted her request in this regard, ISNA reported.

He said during the visit, Douhan’s main mission will be assessing the negative impacts of the unilateral coercive measures on Iranian people’s enjoyment of human rights.

Gharibabadi noted that she will hold meetings with representatives of Iranian state-owned and private organizations during her trip and will visit a number of the country’s centers.

Iran has been under U.S. unilateral sanctions since Washington’s May 2018 ‎withdrawal from a 2015 nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive ‎Plan of Action (JCPOA). The sanctions have mainly targeted Iran’s oil and banking ‎sectors.

Despite Washington claiming that medicine, foodstuff and, in general, humanitarian items are not on the sanctions list, the coercive measures have, in practice, blocked Iran’s access to such products.

In remarks during a session of the UN's Committee on Information on Wednesday, Iran's ambassador to the United Nations, Majid Takht-Ravanchi, called on the world body's Department of Global Communications to ratchet up its efforts to inform the international community about the adverse effects of sanctions on the targeted countries, according to Press TV.

The official considered deployment of the coercive economic measures to be contrary to the principles of international law and humanitarian law that have been specified in the UN Charter.

He, therefore, called on the UN department to increase its efforts to broadcast the negative consequences that the unilateral bans for the target nations.

Takht-Ravanchi said that the sanctions had “both weakened [the trend of] economic growth in the target countries and come to prevent their access to basic medical equipment and materials by restricting access to overseas’ financial resources”.