United Nations agencies and international donors should immediately freeze financial and other assistance to Iran’s drug control programs, Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Harm Reduction International (HRI) said.
They said Iran’s judicial and legal system systematically violates the human rights of accused drug offenders, in particular their right to a fair trial, resulting in numerous death sentences in violation of international law.
The donors should audit the human rights impacts of their projects and not resume any assistance until satisfied that Iran has ended the persistent violation of the rights of drug suspects in its criminal justice system, including abolishing the death penalty for drug offenders.
Rebecca Schleifer, advocacy director of the Health and Human Rights Division at Human Rights Watch, said, “Draconian laws, secret trials, no appeals, and death sentences for possession of small amounts of drugs should warn off any donor that wants to do the right thing.”
UN agencies and international donors have in the past decade provided millions of dollars of financial and technical assistance to support drug control efforts in Iran.
The number of people executed by Iranian authorities for drug-related offenses has risen sharply over the last few years. In 2011, Iran executed at least 600 people, second only to China. Eighty-one percent of these executions were for drug-related crimes, including for personal use. According to Amnesty International, in 2009, of the 389 executions recorded, 166 – almost 43 percent – were drug-related. In 2010 about 68 percent of all executions recorded by the organization – 172 of the 253 known executions – were for drug-related offenses.
