UN member states urged to press Iran on increased executions News
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UN member states urged to press Iran on increased executions

Amnesty International’s deputy regional director or the Middle East and North Africa, Hussein Baoumi, urged UN member states on Thursday to confront Iranian authorities over increasing “weaponization” of the death penalty in the country. Baoumi noted that over 1,000 people have been executed in Iran since the start of 2025—an average of four a day.

Baoumi claimed that Iranian authorities have attempted to “normalize” the execution of hundreds of people every year, and that since the “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests in 2022, the state has increasingly used executions as a tool to instill fear and suppress dissent while punishing marginalized communities. Baoumi stated that the current pace of executions, averaging about four killings a day, has not been seen in Iran since 1989.

The rights group also criticized Iran’s use of the death penalty against people accused of vague and politically motivated charges such as “enmity against God” and “corruption on earth,” as well as those sentenced for drug-related offenses. Such charges likely do not rise to the international legal standard required to apply the death sentence.

The rights group noted that the death penalty in Iran is consistently applied by “grossly unfair” trials, often before “Revolutionary Courts,” which lack independence and collude with Iran’s security and intelligence apparatus. Communities from lower socioeconomic backgrounds and oppressed ethnic minorities such as Afghans, Ahwazi Arabs, Baluchis, and Kurds disproportionately face execution.

Iran is a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Article 6 (2) of the treaty protects the inherent right to life and prevents its arbitrary deprivation. The clause states:

In countries which have not abolished the death penalty, sentence of death may be imposed only for the most serious crimes in accordance with the law in force at the time of the commission of the crime and not contrary to the provisions of the present Covenant and to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. This penalty can only be carried out pursuant to a final judgement rendered by a competent court.

Article 6(4) further stipulates that “anyone sentenced to death shall have the right to seek pardon or commutation of the sentence.”

In September, UN experts expressed concern over the surge of executions in the country, stating that the trend represents a dramatic escalation that violates international human rights law. Iran is one of only four countries, along with Singapore, China, and Saudi Arabia, where executions for drug offenses were confirmed in 2024. Amnesty International found that in 2024, global executions surged to their highest level since 2015.

 

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