A United Nations General Assembly committee adopted a resolution urging Iran to improve its human rights record on Thursday, marking the first such resolution passed since the Iran nuclear agreement meant to put the country’s nuclear weapons program on ice was reached in July.
The non-binding resolution was introduced to the Third Committee, which focuses on social, humanitarian and cultural issues. Seventy-six countries voted in favor of its passage, 35 voted against and 68 abstained.
The language calls on Tehran to address the “alarming high frequency of and increase in the carrying-out of the death penalty, in disregard of internationally recognized safeguards, including executions undertaken without notification to the prisoner’s family members or legal counsel.”
During the first half of the year, Amnesty International said it believed Iran put to death nearly 700 people in what it called a “staggering” execution spree.
The U.N. also urges the country to put a stop to discrimination and other human rights violations against girls and women as well as religious minorities. Stopping forced-marriage practices and allowing “freedom of expression, opinion, association and peaceful assembly” were also mentioned.
Echoing past requests, the resolition calls on Iran to allow the U.N. special rapporteur for human rights in Iran to visit the country. In an October report on human rights, special rapporteur Ahmed Shaheed said he was “alarmed” at the rate of reported executions in Iran, which includes juveniles under the age of 18, and that no special rapporteur has been allowed to actually visit Iran since 2005.
He also reported that executions had been rising at an “exponential” rate between 2005 and peaked in 2014, at a “shocking” 753 executions, and that for the first seven months of 2015, the rate of executions “accelerated at a further staggering rate.”
Iranian officials criticized the resolution as an example of “Iranophobia.”
Iran’s deputy U.N. representative, Gholamhossein Dehghani called the resolution a distortion of the facts and “nothing but baseless and pure speculation and hearsay.”
Human rights groups have been pushing for the U.N. to hold Iran responsible for breaking its domestic and international obligations and not appeasing the Iranians in the wake of the Iran nuclear deal.
“The Iranian authorities shouldn’t think they are getting a pass on human rights just because the nuclear accord has been signed,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch, on Tuesday. “Passing this resolution will send the message that the world has not forgotten about the country’s ongoing human rights abuses.”
Maryam Rajavi, president-elect of Iranian dissident group the National Council of Resistance of Iran, said the resolution proves that Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s assertions that Tehran is letting up restrictions on its people post-nuclear deal are unfounded.
“The nuclear agreement must not be used as an excuse for turning a blind eye to the clerical regime’s inhuman crimes,” Rajavi said, “and any engagement with Tehran must be predicated on improvement in the human rights situation in Iran, particularly an end to the savage death penalty.”
The resolution is expected to pass the full General Assembly in December.
The Third Committee also passed a Saudi-drafted resolition Thurday, condemning Iran and also Russia for its involvement in the Syrian civil war.
