During its review by the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) working group in 2014, Iran received the second highest number of recommendations on the death penalty. Five years later, it is still on the podium of the countries condemning to death and executing the most in the world.
In order to take stock of these five years of work and make recommendations for Iran’s next UPR, to be held in November 2019, ECPM co-organized a side-event on the death penalty in Iran on 12 September at the 42nd session of the Human Rights Council at the United Nations Office in Geneva.
Alongside Taimoor Aliassi of The Association for Human Rights in Kurdistan of Iran, ECPM Director Raphaël Chenuil-Hazan, Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam of Iran Human Rights (IHR) and Roya Boroumand of Abdorrahman Boroumand Center (ABC) (from left to right in the photo) travelled to Geneva to join forces and sound the alarm.
Executions of child offenders, public executions, executions for drug offences, “most serious crimes” confessions obtained under torture, violations of fair trial standards, disproportionate representation of minorities on death row, lack of transparency… Despite the work of NGOs, the situation in Iran remains very worrying.
Roya Boroumand, Abdorrahman Boroumand Center (ABC), at the side-event “Death Penalty in Iran: Recommendations ahead of the 3rd UPR of Iran”
Ressources
The death penalty in Iran: key issues and figures.
Useful and updated information for Iran’s next UPR.
IHR and ECPM report analysing the death penalty in Iran in 2018.
Continue the work
In November 2019, Iran will conduct its third Universal Periodic Review (UPR). At the last UPR in 2014, Iran accepted only one of the 41 recommendations on the death penalty, namely to “take measures to ensure due process and a fair trial, in particular in any process that could lead to the application of the death penalty”. This year’s UPR is an important opportunity for the international community to put the issue of the death penalty back on the agenda.
The positive experience of sustained pressure and emphasis on drug-related executions can and should be applied to other aspects of the death penalty.
The UPR recommendations on the death penalty, which were made in the previous round and only one of which was accepted by Iran, are at the end of the report.
Since 2012, Iran Human Rights (IHR) and ECPM have been working together for the publication, international dissemination and dissemination of the annual reports on the death penalty in Iran.
