Iranian women’s rights activists have been campaigning for a law that protects women for 16 years. The administration of President Hassan Rouhani has been working on the draft law since the 2013 elections. The Cabinet has been reviewing the “Protection, Dignity, and Security of Women Against Violence” bill since September 17, 2019, after the judiciary announced that it had completed its review of the project and returned it to the government. Vice President for Women and Family Affairs Masoumeh Ebtekar told (ISNA) in August that the bill’s submission to parliament was imminent. The authorities should act now, during the “Sixteen Days Campaign Against Gender-Based Violence.”
A national study conducted in 2004 showed that 66% of married women who participated in the survey had been exposed to domestic violence at least once in their lives, and 30% of them had been exposed to physical violence, compared to 10% who were permanently harmed as a result of this violence.
Iranian law also criminalizes consensual sexual relations outside marriage by punishing them with whipping, which puts women at risk of prosecution if they report a rape incident and are not believed by the authorities.
During President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s administration (2005-2013), the presidency drafted a bill to protect women from violence, according to media reports, but never published it or sent it to parliament.
Iran is one of only four countries that has not ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. Despite the efforts of Iranian women’s rights advocates during Mohammad Khatami’s presidency (1997-2005) and a bill passed by parliament in July 2003 to join the agreement, Iran’s Guardian Council, a body of jurists and religious experts empowered to scrutinize parliamentary legislation, has not approved the project, which has been in a legislative deadlock ever since.
Washington Center For Human Rights argue the US and EU governments to take concrete steps to put an end to the culture of impunity for serious human and women rights violations in Iran and to hold those responsible for these violations accountable. We also argue governments to properly investigate the security forces’ bloody crackdown on the November 2019 protests, which resulted in the deaths of over 300 people.
We are concerned about the high rate of executions, particularly of children and those convicted in connection with protests and freedom of expression, such as Navid Afkari and Ruhollah Zam, as well as reports of the use of torture to extract forced confessions.