Thank you, honourable Chair, and honourable members.
I will begin by thanking the committee for inviting me to contribute to hearings as part of Iran accountability week, and on my work for the UN in investigating the human rights situation in Iran.
In 2011, when I began my mandate, Iran's record of co-operation with UN human rights mechanisms was arguably at an all-time low. Iran was still reeling from the effects of its biggest post-revolution crisis: the post-2009 election protests, which led to the death of peaceful protestors at the hands of security forces and thousands of arrests and convictions following grossly unfair trials. The experience appeared to have emboldened hard-liners' stance against engagement, or as they called it, “interference” by the UN or the international community in the name of “human rights”.
The UN special procedures had been denied country access for six years despite a standing invitation pledging to allow special procedure requests to visit the country, and Iran had the largest number of unanswered communications issued by the special procedures. Despite being a signatory to five international human rights treaties, Iran had not undergone a review by a relevant treaty body in years. At the start of my mandate, the government rarely addressed the allegations in my reports with qualitative information, and instead chose to dismiss them as propaganda and lies.
Now almost six years later we can look to a record of co-operation with UN rights bodies and mechanisms and acknowledge Iran has indeed made some progress toward engagement on this front. It has invited two mandate holders to visit the country in the coming months, undergone reviews by three treaty bodies, and will submit to a review by a fourth treaty body next year. Its rate of response to special procedure communications has improved, including my own. In fact, over the past five years, the quality of the government's response to my reports has improved and now includes substantive information regarding specific allegations.
In addition, the Iranian authorities regularly meet with me in New York and Geneva and have increasingly arranged meetings with other stakeholders, including judges, security forces, and members of civil society, including independent NGOs.
I firmly believe the current course of action taken by the world community has contributed to Iran's reorientation. This includes the UNGA resolution on Iran first tabled by Canada in 2003, after the torture and murder in an Iranian jail of the Iranian Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi, and the Human Rights Council's decision to return Iran to its agenda in 2011.
Both of these measures have played a unique and vital role in encouraging the authorities in Iran to increase their co-operation with UN human rights mechanisms. Without a doubt, some of this progress in co-operation is a result of internal political changes in the country, including the election of President Hassan Rouhani and an administration that has put re-engagement with the international community at the top of its agenda albeit, as Professor Akhavan noted, out of lack of choice.
There is little doubt in my mind that continued international focus on Iran's human rights record has also played an important role in the government's changing behaviour. After all, Iran is a country that cares about its global reputation, and I believe the price of non-cooperation became too high to accept for government officials keen on re-engaging with the world community.
More specifically, when it became obvious to government officials that non-cooperation with my mandate would not prevent me or the UN Secretary General from producing detailed reports alleging serious rights violations in the country, cooler heads, I believe, prevailed and decided to advance a policy of engagement with the international human rights system, even if it meant only to give their side of the story. Even if, as some say, this change is a result of moderates convincing hard-liners in Iran that it makes sense to engage with the UN rights mechanisms in order to ultimately convince the world community that they no longer needed it, it is indisputable that the pressure and focus have resulted in a change in behaviour. If this change continues in a meaningful way, it can save lives.
Last year, 70 members of Parliament tabled a bill, which if approved by the Parliament and the Guardian Council, would reduce the punishment for non-violent drug crimes from death to life imprisonment.
If the bill becomes law, it could reduce execution rates by as much as 65% to 70%. Officials, including judges, who have sentenced non-violent drug offenders to death, cited the increasing number of criticisms from UN human rights bodies regarding execution of drug offenders as a reason that it was necessary for them to rethink the use of the death penalty in Iran. The world community needs to continue supporting these mechanisms because we have not yet seen demonstrable and concrete improvement in the situation in the country on the ground.
Though I applaud the government's increasing engagement with my mandate, I want to stress that Tehran still refuses to allow me into the country to carry out my work.
Perhaps more troubling, people in the country who the government assumes have co-operated with my mandate have been the targets of government reprisals. And although two special procedures have been extended invitations, Iran continues to ignore repeated requests for country access from special procedures that have been trying to visit the country since 2003 to document pressing rights violations. Iran has refused to accept the vast majority of recommendations that member states provided regarding core civil and political rights reforms during the last two rounds of the universal review process conducted as part of the universal peer review process in 2010 and 2014.
More importantly, however, the human rights situation in Iran remains quite grim and requires continuing international attention. Just this morning I heard the grim news that 13 individuals were put to death in Iran, including one public execution. In my last address to the Human Rights Council this past March, I identified some very real challenges Iran faces and must address if there is to be a real improvement in what's happening in the country.
My last report included information regarding a wide range of issues, from the staggering surge in the execution of at least 966 prisoners in 2015, executions that Professor Akhavan referred to just now, the highest rate now in well over 20 years to discriminatory practices against women and girls. The government continues to execute juveniles, fundamental problems with the administration of criminal justice persist, religious and ethnic minorities face persecution and prosecution, and human rights defenders, including journalists, the mainstays in any democracy, continue to face capricious treatment at the hands of the authorities.
In short, much work remains ahead, and I don't believe that now is the time to divert attention away from Iran's human rights record, abandon the support for rights mechanisms, and course of action that have been invested to date, and which may have produced some results.
We must not forget the lessons of the past. In 2002, the mandate of the previous UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran, Professor Maurice Copithorne, was not renewed. At the time, a reformist president, Mohammad Khatami had just begun his second term. The UN began a dialogue with Iran, and there was much hope that the world community engaging with Iran would improve the public situation, but this didn't happen. Hard-liners in Iran increasingly frustrated Mr. Khatami's reforms, and the political openness that characterized his first four years soon evaporated.
By 2005, the EU’s dialogue ended. Iran stopped granting access to UN procedures, and Iran became ripe for rights abuses perpetrated by members of security forces and the judiciary.
Today as we consider our future engagement, we must reflect on this past and on the sense of the time. We must encourage accountability by applauding progress, demanding accountability, and admonishing non-compliance.
I believe now more than ever it is time for Canada and the world community to work hand in hand to find effective and better ways to engage with Iran on human rights as they look to broaden their political, economic, and cultural engagement with Iran. Increasing engagement with Iran and continued focus on human rights, in my view, are not necessarily mutually exclusive. As I've said before, Iran's re-engagement with the world provides a golden opportunity, not just to reach out to world leaders, but also to ensure that businesses and others can also contribute to advancing human rights in the country. But such engagement, partly inevitable as the sanctions regime is wound down, must still proceed with caution, never at the expense of clear, strong, and public support for better human rights protection without which there are no real long-term dividends. Engagement must create more transparency and not obscure the focus and concern for human rights.
Thank you.