The High Council for Human Rights has sent its midterm report to the United Nations about the human rights situation in Iran, citing “huge progress” in improving those rights.
It was sent on Saturday to the UN’s Human Rights Council in line with the Universal Periodic Review, known as UPR, a process that involves a review of the human rights records of all member states of the UN.
The report cites “huge progress” in improving the human rights situation in Iran, based on Islamic standards and the country’s constitution,
“In accordance with the existing conditions and with the aim of upholding social justice and establishing people’s welfare, Iran has made huge investment in economic, cultural and social fields, and has guaranteed people’s rights to equal participation and progress.”
The report elaborates on Iran’s laws and measures aimed at supporting human rights for different groups, from the disabled to religious minorities, women and children to refugees, during the Iranian year 1399 (March 2020-March 2021) and the first six months of year 1400 (ended on March 20, 2022).
The report says that Iran has made significant achievements in improving its human rights situation despite restrictions in place as a result of “cruel and inhumane” sanctions imposed by the US over the past 43 years.
“The unilateral coercive measures by the United States against the Islamic Republic of Iran over the past four decades have extensively and discriminately violated the basic rights of the Iranian people and left irreparable harms,” it adds.
“Those measures are in clear violation of the UN Charter, international law regulations as well as international human rights laws,” the report notes.
It names some of the US’s measures including sanctions on medicine imports and equipment to Iran, saying that such sanctions had an adverse effect on hospitals during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“To lower the effect of the unilateral US sanctions, which have been tightened in the past two years, Iran has taken into consideration the impacts of the coercive measures in all processes involving the formulation of laws and policy-making, and has implemented plans supporting vulnerable classes of the society, particularly during the Covid pandemic.”
The report has stressed that there is always place for further improving the human rights situation.
It has also stressed that the Islamic Republic of Iran is among the countries that actively implements the UPR, and “the country’s basic policy is to support this balanced and non-selective mechanism.”
Read the full report here.
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