Current Human Rights Concerns in Iran: Women’s Rights and Arbitrary Executions

[Melanie O’Brien is Associate Professor of International Law at the University of Western Australia and President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars.

Javaid Rehman is Professor of Law at Brunel University of London and former Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran (2018–2024). He is currently Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University Law School and Visiting Fellow with the University of Western Australia Institute of Advanced Studies.]

Introduction

For decades, human rights defenders have extensively tracked human rights violations in Iran, drawing attention to consistent issues with particular human rights. These include violation of the right to freedom of assembly through violence against and arrests of protestors; arbitrary detentions; torture and cruel treatment; discrimination against minorities; enforced disappearances; cruel and inhuman punishments; the use of the death penalty as a tool of political repression; and systematic discrimination against women and girls. The Iranian regime is and has been brutal and violent since its inception through the Iranian revolution of 1979.

In addition to its existing Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran (first established in 1984; re-established in 2011), in 2022, the UN Human Rights Council established an Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran (FFMI) due to ‘the deteriorating situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran’. The FFMI was established in response to the ‘the violent crackdown on peaceful protests’ that followed the death in custody of Jina Mahsa Amini in September 2022 and the ensuing Women, Life, Freedom Movement that advocated for women’s rights in Iran. The FFMI’s original mandate was limited to human rights violations related to the protests following Amini’s death in custody. However, in March 2025, in recognition of systemic, ongoing serious human rights violations, including persecution of women and girls, the mandate of the FFMI was expanded to cover monitoring and investigation of all allegations of ‘recent and ongoing human rights violations’ in Iran, ‘including discrimination on grounds of gender, ethnicity, religion or belief and political views’. 

While many human rights violations continue to be an issue in Iran, this post will discuss two of these that are not only continuing but escalating: discrimination against and persecution of women and girls, and arbitrary executions. The post seeks to provide an overview and update of these specific human rights issues currently in Iran.

Discrimination Against and Persecution of Women and Girls

The systemic discrimination and mistreatment of Iranian girls and women raises very serious concerns. The former Special Rapporteur on Iran has observed that Iranian authorities have maintained a system of gender apartheid, insisting on draconian laws, policies and practices that increasingly violate the human rights and human dignity of Iranian girls and women. Many other activists have also drawn attention to the existence of gender apartheid in Iran.

Assigning criminal responsibility to girls from the age of nine lunar years for qisas (retribution in kind) and hudud (fixed penalty crimes) crimes has had tragic consequences, as has the age of marriage, which for girls currently remains 13, with even younger girls able to be married at the behest of the father and with the approval of the courts. Child marriages are forced marriages and inherently destructive to the life of the girl child, and Iran has seen an increasing number of child marriages in recent years. 

Girls and women face discrimination and violence in every aspect of public and private life, including in employment, administrative and political positions. For example, women are ineligible to serve as the head of the judiciary, and while women can serve on a judicial panel, ‘Iranian law prohibits them from rendering a final judgment’ (para. 56). The criminal justice system continues to exonerate perpetrators of violence against women and girls, or reduce their punishments, as well as exempting them from criminal liability and qisas, for example, expressly permitting a man who witnesses his wife committing adultery to kill or assault either or both parties (Penal Code Book 5, Chapter 18, Art. 630).

In recent developments, the Iranian regime published a draconian ‘Protection of the Family through Promoting the Culture of Hijab and Chastity’ law, which was due to come into force in December 2024. The law’s goal was to codify strict enforcement of women’s wearing of the hijab through 71 articles. The law imposes large fines on women who wear ‘improper’ hijab or refuse to wear the hijab in public, with potential prison terms for repeat offenders, as well as imposing long-term prison sentences for engaging in activism against compulsory hijab wearing. The law provides an all-of-society implementation to the law, by including penalties for business owners and civil service who do not report violations to the authorities. Intelligence and security agencies are empowered to suppress non-compliance with the law, ensuring that the law becomes part of the regime’s overall goal of surveillance and control of public life, particularly for women and girls.

The draconian and harsh criminal sanctions for failing to comply with compulsory hijab is shocking and unacceptable, and unsurprisingly, the law attracted significant criticism, including from UN human rights experts. On 13 December 2024, a group of UN experts released a statement that ‘[t]he new hijab law marks an intensification of state control over women’s bodies in Iran and is a further assault on women’s rights and freedoms’. States and human rights organisations were also critical of the law. Four days later, the Iranian National Security Council paused the implementation of this law, with the President claiming it was due to ambiguity in the legislation, but the authors surmise that the broad international pressure may have contributed to this pause, demonstrating the importance of action from the international community.

Arbitrary Executions

Iran remains the highest known executioner per capita amongst all countries, and 2024 saw a significant increase in the number of executions carried out in Iran. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights noted that ‘at least 901 people were reportedly executed in 2024’, which was a 6% increase in 2023 numbers (853). The Iranian regime violates the fundamental right to life – through arbitrary executions – in the most brutal manner, including through violating other human rights: within Iran there are currently over 80 offences that carry death penalty. These include qisas, but also overbroad and vague national security offences such as moharebeh (taking up arms to take lives or property or to create fear in public), efsad-e fel-arz (spreading corruption on Earth), and baghy (armed rebellion). The death penalty is also applied to other offences such as drug-related offences, adultery, homosexuality, apostasy, blasphemy, theft and alcohol consumption (for the fourth conviction), as well as fraud, economic crimes, prostitution and some forms of trafficking in persons.

The regime also continues with execution of juveniles, executions disproportionally targeting ethnic and religious minorities, and executions conducted through torture-driven confessions, all clear violations of international law, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and other treaties to which Iran is a state party. Iran has weaponised the death penalty and mass executions as an instrument of repression and fear, exterminating those challenging this brutality. 

Arbitrary executions are also part of the targeting of women and girls. The worst form of state-sanctioned violence against women and girls is reflected in the large-scale and unacceptably high levels of executions of women and girls every year.  It is reported that at least 31 women were executed in 2024, the highest number of executions of women in any country in the world. 

These recent figures are alarming, but reflect long-term implementation of arbitrary executions, with a history in Iran of large-scale arbitrary executions. In a report published in July 2024, as the former UN Special Rapporteur on Iran, one of the authors documented the summary, arbitrary and extra-judicial executions of thousands of arbitrarily imprisoned political opponents, amounting to the crimes against humanity of murder and extermination, as well as genocide, between 1979–1988, and in particular the 1988 massacre of political prisoners. These executions included those of women, some of them who had been reportedly raped before their executions, and a very large number of children. 

Conclusion

Iranian authorities must respect the fundamental human rights and dignity of all girls and women; end gender apartheid in Iranian society; eliminate in law and in practice all forms of persecution of and discrimination and violence against women and girls; allow them to live in dignity as equal citizens so as to enable them to make informed choices about their lives and how they wish to express themselves, including through their clothing. Iran must also immediately end the barbaric arbitrary practice of the death penalty, which is incompatible with human rights and human dignity. The arbitrary deprivation of life remains a major serious human rights concern, particularly the disproportionate and targeted nature of arbitrary executions of women, men, juveniles, and ethnic, racial and religious minorities of Iran.

A major factor in the continuation and escalation of human rights violations in Iran is the lack of any accountability for these violations, some of which amount to international crimes. Individual perpetrators are not held accountable, and the state is not held accountable. One of the authors of this post published a report in July 2024, at the conclusion of his term as UN Special Rapporteur on Iran, detailing historical crimes (mass human rights violations; see the other author’s chapter here) committed by Iran and the need for accountability. This report has attracted the ire of the Iranian regime, which does not want accountability for these crimes. Thus, accountability is a significant challenge for the people of Iran, and markedly, the victims of the state’s repressive policies. If accountability is denied for abuses committed over 30 years ago, there is little to no chance of justice within the regime for recent and current abuses, despite the need and right of victims (and families) to remedy and reparations for harm suffered.

As noted in the introduction, international experts and human rights organisations continue to draw attention to these human rights violations and international crimes. The international community needs to take action against a regime that does not respect the rights of its own people, and as we have demonstrated here, forms of such action can produce a positive impact. We note that the UK continues to criticise the ‘Hijab and Chastity’ Law, and the authors encourage other states to keep up this direct pressure on Iran to dispose of this law altogether, and also provide support to the Iran-focused UN mechanisms. There must be an end to the continuing impunity of this regime; all victims and their families deserve justice and accountability. 

Authors’ note: This collaboration was made possible due to funding from the University of Western Australia Institute of Advanced Studies.