The United Nations had such an investigator for Iran starting in 1984. But in 2001, the Islamic Republic succeeded in beating back a Western effort to renew the special investigator’s term.
Last week, Sweden and the United States spearheaded a drive to form a new office to look at Iran’s human rights compliance, taking advantage of the rising tide of analyses saying the Islamic Republic’s compliance with human rights norms had worsened dramatically in recent years.
The vote came in the 47-member Human Rights Council. The proposal to name a new “special rapporteur” for Iran was approved on a vote of 22-7 with 14 abstentions.
The actual special rapporteur is expected to be named in June.
The motion passed with the overwhelming support of Europeans and North Americans. Of the 13 such countries on the council, 12 voted for the resolution and one, Russia, voted no.
Iran’s problem was that it garnered little support from within the Islamic world. Of the 15 members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) on the council, two voted for the resolution (Senegal, which just recently broke relations with Iran over arms it thinks were sent to rebels, and the Maldive Islands). Three voted no (Pakistan, Mauritania and Bangladesh) and the other 10 all abstained, including Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Malaysia.
The other continents scattered their votes, but in each case the yes votes outnumbered the no votes. Below is a table showing the breakdown.
Yes No Abs
Islamic 2 3 10
Euro 12 1 0
LatAm 5 2 1
Asia 2 1 2
Africa 1 0 1
Pakistan, speaking for the OIC, announced that the organization opposed the resolution and was against the naming of a special investigator for Iran. But the vote showed just how much attention members of the OIC pay to the organization. Although Pakistan said the OIC wanted the resolution defeated, only three of the 15 OIC member states voted no.
Pakistani Ambassador Zamir Akram said the OIC as a matter of principle was opposed to “country mandates,” that is the naming and shaming of individual countries for human rights failures, arguing that these were counterproductive. This is the most common argument of those who oppose such resolutions.
Cuba, however, went much further. Ambassador Rudolfo Reyes Rodriguez said, “This resolution is being used as a pretext to perhaps use military action against Iran.”
Iranian Ambassador Mohammad-Reza Sajjadi didn’t make that argument. He said Iran had always protected human rights because that is what its religion and culture require. He said Iran had always cooperated fully with the UN human rights office and had extended numerous invitations for human rights investigators to visit Iran and had in fact hosted six different such visitors.
Most of Sajjadi’s speech was, however, an attack on the United States, saying that sponsor of the resolution had an abominable human rights record, supporting Israel’s massive violation of Palestinian human rights, “massacring” Iraqis and Afghans, torturing prisoners, oppressing its own native peoples, and advancing racism, racial discrimination and xenophobia within the United States itself.
Brazilian Ambassador Maria Nazareth Farani Azevedo pointed out that Brazil had abstained in 2001 when the previous special rapporteur’s term was not renewed because Iran had committed itself to more cooperation on human rights. She said, however, that since late 2005, just after Mahmud Ahmadi-nejad became President in August 2005, no UN human rights officials had been allowed to visit Iran, despite making numerous requests.
Maurice Copithorne, the Canadian who was the last special rapporteur on Iran from 1995 to 2001, told Radio Farda that special rapporteurs cannot impose changes as they are really only reporters writing to the UN on what is right and what is wrong on human rights conditions in countries. He said a special rapporteur can only visit a country at that country’s invitation. In his case, he was allowed to visit in 1996, but Iran did not like his report and denied him entry for the remaining five years of his term.
Copithorne said he advocated a new special rapporteur as a kind of “psychological warfare” against Iran’s human rights violations. He said, “You just don’t know when you’re having an impact on the Iranian government. But I always felt there were situations in which I was having an impact—usually a non-public impact.”
Copithorne said he realized that Iran took great offense at the existence of a special rapporteur “quite apart from I might have said. They felt it was an inferior group to be associated with—that is, those countries who were made subject to a report by a special rapporteur weren’t where they thought Iran should be.”
The current special rapporteurs for offending countries cover Sudan, North Korea, Myanmar and the Occupied Palestinian Territory.