December 25, 2015
The UN General Assembly voted last Thursday to condemn the Islamic Republic yet again for human rights violations. But only two fewer countries voted against Iran this year than last year despite the nuclear agreement.
Some observers thought a number of countries might shift their votes once the nuclear issue was resolved. But that didn’t happen. The Obama Administration has long argued that the nuclear agreement addresses only the nuclear issue and leaves Iran’s resort to terrorism, human rights violations and tampering in other countries as open issues. It appeared as if the rest of the world’s governments shared that view.
The vote last December on the annual human rights resolution was 83-35 with 68 abstentions, a record number of abstentions.
The vote last week was 81-37 with 67 abstentions.
The General Assembly had not posted the country-by-country vote record before the Iran Times went to press, so it was not yet known which countries shifted.
The highest number of votes for the resolution condemning Iran was 89 in 2011. Since then, the votes against Iran have slipped to 86 in both 2012 and 2013, 83 in 2014 and 81 this year.
The only other country condemned for its human rights conduct this year was North Korea. That vote went overwhelmingly against Pyongyang: 119-19 with 48 abstentions. Iran was one of the 19 standing with North Korea. This year’s vote shows three more countries voting against North Korea.
The chief sponsor of the resolution against Iran was Canada. Canada has sponsored the resolution every year since 2003, when Canadians became incensed with Iran over the beating death of Iranian-Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi.
