(Geneva) - The United Nations Human Rights Council should renew the mandate of the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Iran and ensure the continuation of a complementary international independent investigative mechanism with a broad mandate to build on the work of the UN fact-finding mission, 42 Iranian and international human rights organizations said on March 18, 2025, in a letter to member states. 

The fact-finding mission and the special rapporteur presented reports of their work to the Human Rights Council on March 18, 2025. The fact-finding mission, following two years of independent and thorough investigations and analysis of an extensive body of evidence, concluded that gross violations of human rights, some of which amount to crimes against humanity, are ongoing and that the authorities continue their persecutory acts against women and girls, members of minorities, and justice-seeking victims and their families in Iran. 

"The reports by the fact-finding mission and the special rapporteur present a grim picture of a full-fledged crisis of human rights and impunity in Iran that requires a robust response from the Human Rights Council," said Hilary Power, UN Geneva director at Human Rights Watch. "With prospects for justice and remedy absent inside Iran, these mandates are critical for establishing meaningful paths toward accountability and supporting courageous justice-seeking victims, survivors, and their families."

Since the role was established in 2011, the UN special rapporteur on Iran has played a crucial role by monitoring and reporting on a wide range of human rights violations and issuing urgent appeals and other communications to protect individuals at risk, including those at imminent risk of execution.

The fact-finding mission was established in November 2022 amid a brutal state crackdown on the protests that started following the death in morality police custody of Jina Mahsa Amini, a young Kurdish woman arbitrarily detained in connection with compulsory and degrading compulsory veiling laws. In addition to conducting investigations, the mission was mandated to advance accountability for gross violations of human rights and crimes under international law, including by collecting and preserving evidence and identifying suspected perpetrators. 

In its first report in March 2024, the fact-finding mission concluded that in the context of their deadly crackdown on "Woman, Life, Freedom" protests, the Iranian authorities had committed serious human rights violations and crimes against humanity of murder, imprisonment, torture, rape and other forms of sexual violence, enforced disappearance, other inhuman acts, and persecution on the grounds of gender, intersecting with religion and ethnicity. In 2025, the mission concluded that some of these crimes have continued unbated. 

The human rights situation in Iran has continuously deteriorated. The authorities' relentless assault on the right to life is ongoing, with well over 900 executions in 2024 alone. The death penalty is used against children, in flagrant breach of international law, and as a weapon of political repression, particularly to crush women and minorities' activism and resistance. Women and girls and ethnic and religious minorities continue to face systematic and extreme forms of discrimination and state violence.  

The authorities have refused to remedy past and ongoing violations and crimes under international law. Instead, they have persecuted victims' families and others seeking truth and justice. Their repression has not remained confined within the country's borders. Iranian authorities' harassment of dissidents, journalists, and media workers abroad, known as transnational repression, has escalated in recent years, with some facing threats to their lives. 

Source: Human Rights Watch