Country of origin information report Iran January 2010

Return to contents

Go to list of sources
Societal treatment and attitudes
21.45 An article on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty titled ‘Persian Gay and Lesbian Activist Urges Tolerance’, dated 17 May 2007, reported that:
“Sexual issues are considered taboo in Iran, and there is widespread misinformation about homosexuality. Many Iranians consider it a disease or sickness. For some, homosexuality among men is synonymous with pedophilia.
“As a result, gays and lesbians in Iran cannot be open about their sexual orientation. Many suppress their feelings. There are also reports of sex-change operations or hormone therapy to escape persecution. Some also face arranged or forced marriages insisted on by their families.
“Parsi [Arsham Parsi, secretary-general of Toronto-based Iranian Queer Organisation] claims a lack of knowledge and homophobic culture that rules Iranian society puts enormous pressure on homosexuals.” [42ae]
21.46 The USSD report for 2005 confirmed that there were known meeting places for homosexuals. [4q] (p24) However, in an article in the New Internationalist titled ‘Sexual exiles’, dated March 1992, an Iranian interviewee claimed that parks are raided regularly by civilian-clothed police or ‘guardists’. [107]
21.47 The ACCORD report of 2001 continued: “A different sexual orientation may, however, create problems. Still, homosexuality is practised every day, and as long as this happens behind closed doors within your own four walls, and as long as people do not intend to proselytize ‘transvestitism’ or homosexuality, they will most likely remain unharmed.” [3c]
21.48 Another letter from HRW to Minister Verdonk titled ‘No Deportations of LGBT Iranians to Torture’ dated 5 October 2006 stated: “Societal as well as official scrutiny of ‘deviant’ behavior is widespread in Iran, with neighbors and even family members enlisted to support the state’s moral policing.” [8ae]
Return to contents

Go to list of sources
Transgender and transsexuals
21.49 An article in the Guardian dated 27 July 2005 reported that in contrast to almost everywhere else in the Muslim world, sex change operations are legal in Iran for anyone who can afford the minimum £2,000 cost and satisfy interviewers that they meet necessary psychological criteria. As a result, women who endured agonising childhood and adolescent experiences as boys, and – albeit in fewer numbers – young men who reached sexual maturity as girls, are easy to find in Tehran. Iran has even become a magnet for patients from eastern European and Arab countries seeking to change their genders. [16f] (p1)
21.50 Another Guardian article dated 25 September 2007 reported that:
“When Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s ever-combative president, provoked his latest controversy in New York this week by asserting that there were no homosexuals in his country, he may have been indulging in sophistry or just plain wishful thinking. While Mr Ahmadinejad may want to believe that his ideal of an Islamic society is exclusively non-gay, it is undermined by the paradox that transsexuality and sex changes are tolerated and encouraged under Iran’s theocratic system.
“Iran has between 15,000 and 20,000 transsexuals, according to official statistics, although unofficial estimates put the figure at up to 150,000. Iran carries out more gender change operations than any other country in the world besides Thailand.
“Sex changes have been legal since the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, spiritual leader of the 1979 Islamic revolution passed a fatwa authorising them nearly 25 years ago. While homosexuality is considered a sin, transsexuality is categorised as an illness subject to cure.
“The government seeks to keep its approval quiet in line with its strait-laced stance on sexuality, but state support has actually increased since Mr Ahmadinejad took office in 2005. His government has begun providing grants of £2,250 for operations and further funding for hormone therapy. It is also proposing loans of up to £2,750 to allow those undergoing surgery to start their own businesses.” [16h]
21.51 An article on the BBC website titled ‘Iran’s ‘diagnosed transsexuals’, dated 25 February 2008, reported:
“Sex changes have been legal in Iran since Ayatollah Khomeini, the spiritual leader of the 1979 Islamic revolution, passed a fatwa - a religious edict - authorising them for ‘diagnosed transsexuals’ 25 years ago.
“Today, Iran carries out more sex change operations than any other nation in the world except for Thailand.
“The government even provides up to half the cost for those needing financial assistance and a sex change is recognised on your birth certificate.
“‘Islam has a cure for people suffering from this problem. If they want to change their gender, the path is open,’ says Hojatol Islam Muhammad Mehdi Kariminia, the religious cleric responsible for gender reassignment.
“He says an operation is no more a sin than ‘changing wheat to flour to bread’.
“Yet homosexuality is still punishable by death.
“‘The discussion is fundamentally separate from a discussion regarding homosexuals. Absolutely not related. Homosexuals are doing something unnatural and against religion,’ says Kariminia. ‘It is clearly stated in our Islamic law that such behaviour is not allowed because it disrupts the social order.’” [21r]
21.52 The article continued:
“Like many young people in Iran, Anoosh [a 21 year old transsexual] struggled to reconcile his sexual identity with the wishes of family, community and culture. He says he was continuously harassed and threatened with arrest by Iran’s morality police before he had his sex change...
“Documentary film maker Tanaz Eshaghian spent weeks filming Anoosh, Ali and other transsexuals in Iran. She thinks that part of what is driving many of the boys to operate is the desire to avoid shame.
“‘If you are a male with female tendencies, they don’t see that as something natural or genetic. They see it as someone who is consciously acting dirty.’
“Being diagnosed as a transsexual makes it a medical condition, not a moral one.
“Once a doctor has made a diagnosis - and an operation is in the pipeline - the transsexual can get official permission from his local government official to cross-dress in public.” [21r]
21.53 The Advisory Panel on Country Information (APCI) review of the COI Service’s Iran COI Report of August 2008, undertaken by Dr Reza Molavi and Dr Mohammad M Hedayati-Kakhki of the Centre for Iranian Studies at Durham University, dated 23 September 2008, (APCI Report 2008) stated that:
“Once a transgender individual has undergone gender reassignment, that person legally becomes the proper gender- male, in the case of transgender men, and female, in the case of transgender women. To obtain legal permission for sex-change operations and new birth certificates, applicants must provide medical proof of gender-identity disorder. There are now several clinics staffed by psychiatrists and clinical psychologists who are authorised to provide a clinical assessment of the patients requesting a sex change operation. After the operation, all legal documents, including birth certificates and passports, are changed accordingly.” [6a] (p54)
21.54 A Guardian news article dated 11 September 2009 reported that:
“Iran is set to allow what is believed to be its first transsexual marriage after the would-be bride asked a court to override her father's opposition to the match. The woman, named only as Shaghayegh, told Tehran's family court that she wanted to wed her best friend from school, who had recently undergone a sex-change operation to become a man, but was unable to obtain her father's blessing, as legally required. Now her father has agreed to permit the union on condition that the male partner, Ardashir, who was previously a woman called Negar, undergoes a medical examination intended to prove it would be a proper male-female relationship.
“The case comes against the backdrop of Iran's notoriously repressive policies on homosexuality, which is illegal under the country's strict theocratic code.” [16e]
Return to contents

Go to list of sources
Disability
22.01 The US State Department Country Report on Human Rights Practices 2008, Iran, released on 25 February 2009, (USSD Report 2008) stated that:
“Discrimination against persons with disabilities was prohibited by law. The law also provided for state-funded vocational education for persons with disabilities, but according to domestic news reports, vocational centers were confined to urban areas and unable to meet the needs of the entire population of persons with disabilities. Building accessibility for persons with disabilities remained a widespread problem.” [4a] (Section 5)
Return to contents

Go to list of sources
Women
Overview
For information about girls see section on Children
23.01 The 2009 Social Institutions and Gender Index (SIGI), a composite measure of gender equality based on the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD’s) Gender, Institutions and Development Database, ranked Iran 95^th of the 102 non-OECD countries assessed. The SIGI Country Profile on Iran, accessed on 31 December 2009, stated that: “Iran is a theocratic republic; as such, the situation of women is very much affected by Islam and Sharia law. The Constitution supports equal rights to a large degree, but its enforcement is generally poor and discriminatory provisions still remain.” [39a]
23.02 The report of the Secretary-General to the United Nations on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran, dated 1 October 2008 stated that:
“Gender disparities remain among geographical regions in the country. The Islamic Republic of Iran is reported to have made important achievements in women’s education and health since 1990 … For instance, the female-to-male literacy ratio in the 15-to-24 age group has increased from 87.9 per cent to 98.6 per cent. The girls’ primary, secondary and tertiary education enrolment ratio has markedly increased, from 79.2 per cent to 94.3 per cent, with female students constituting 64 per cent of all college students. Access to health care, including reproductive health care, has become nearly universal. As noted previously, maternal and infant mortality rates have also declined sharply.” [10a] (p12)
23.03 The report of the Secretary-General to the United Nations, dated 23 September 2009, noted that Iran has not ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). [10g] (p12)
23.04 The Amnesty International Annual Report 2009, covering events in 2008, released in May 2009, stated:
“Women faced continuing discrimination in law and in practice, and those campaigning for women’s rights were targeted for state repression. Parliament debated legislation that, if implemented, would limit women’s access to university education of their choice by imposing new residency restrictions. Controversial articles relating to marriage in draft legislation were dropped under pressure from women’s rights campaigners. The authorities closed the journal Zanan (Women), blocked women’s rights websites and disrupted peaceful gatherings of women’s rights activists, such as members of the Campaign for Equality which demands an end to legal discrimination against women.
“In February the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences reported that the government had not responded to a single communication made in 2007. In November [2008] the Rapporteur criticized Iran for its repression of women’s rights defenders.
“Dozens of women’s rights campaigners were detained, interrogated and some tried for their peaceful activities, including up to 10 who were sentenced by lower courts to prison terms and, in at least two cases, flogging.” [9h]
23.05 The Center for Iranian Studies, in a September 2007 overview of Ahmadinejad’s gender policy observed that:
“Ever since his election as president of the Islamic Republic of Iran in 2005, Mahmud Ahmadinejad’s attention-grabbing statements have aroused public wrath not merely internationally, but in Iran as well. Some of his most controversial domestic declarations have been related to the country’s gender policies.
“Overall, Ahmadinejad has tried to demonstrate open-mindedness towards women’s affairs. During his presidential campaign he even pledged not to initiate crackdowns on women’s dress. Yet Ahmadinejad’s promises pale in the face of the authorities’ current seasonal crackdowns on women’s dress, the mixing of men and women in public and women’s rights activists.” [94a]
23.06 The Human Rights Annual Report 2008, issued by the United Kingdom Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) in April 2009, stated that: “Women continue to face widespread discrimination in law and practice, despite President Ahmadinejad's claims that Iranian women are the 'freest in the world'. Gender inequality is widespread and sustained by Iranian law. … Judicial officials often discriminate between the sexes, and sentences of stoning to death for adultery are disproportionately handed down to women.” [26b]
Return to contents

Go to list of sources
Legal rights
23.07 The US State Department Report on Human Rights Practices 2008, released on 25 February 2009, (USSD Report 2008) stated that:
“The constitution nominally provides women with equal protection under the law and all human, political, economic, social, and cultural rights in conformity with Islam; however, provisions in the Islamic civil and penal codes, in particular sections dealing with family and property law, discriminate against women. Shortly after the 1979 revolution, the government repealed the 1967 Family Protection Law that provided women with increased rights in the home and workplace and replaced it with a legal system based largely on Shari'a practices.” [4a] (Section 5)
23.08 The USSD Report 2008 also noted that “Women sometimes received disproportionate punishment for crimes such as adultery, including death sentences.” [4a] (Section 5) For example, “A man could escape punishment for killing a wife caught in the act of adultery if he was certain she was a consenting partner; the same rule does not apply for women whose husbands committed adultery.” [4a] (Section 5)
23.09 The Women’s Forum against Fundamentalism in Iran’s website includes a list of “official laws against women in Iran”, compiled in 2005. It cites Article 18 of the passport law as stating that married women require their husband's permission to apply for a passport. [59] A Guardian news article dated 6 October 2009, by Shirin Ebadi, one of the founders of the One Million Signatures Campaign [also known as the Campaign for Equality], noted that “Women also require their husband’s permission to work, travel or leave the country.” [16d]
23.10 Amnesty International’s report IRAN: Women’s rights defenders defy repression, dated 28 February 2008, stated that:
“Women in Iran face widespread discrimination under the law. They are excluded from key areas of the state – they cannot, for example, be judges or stand for the presidency. They do not have equal rights with men in marriage, divorce, child custody and inheritance. Criminal harm suffered by a woman is less severely punished than the same harm suffered by a man. Evidence given by women in court is worth half that given by a man. Although the legal age for marriage is 13, fathers can apply for permission to arrange that their daughters are married at a younger age – and to men much older than their daughters. Men are allowed to practice polygamy, women are not. Men have an incontestable right in law to divorce their spouse. Women do not.” [9aah]
23.11 A later Amnesty International article dated 29 October 2009 elaborated, stating that women:
“…are not treated equally before the law and courts, in clear violation of international fair trial standards. The age of criminal responsibility for women is lower than that for men and a woman's testimony is worth only half that of a man. They are particularly vulnerable to unfair trials because in Iran they are more likely than men to be illiterate and more likely to sign confessions to crimes they did not commit. Discrimination against women in other aspects of their lives also leaves them more susceptible to conviction for adultery...” [9m]
23.12 The USSD Report 2008 stated that:
“Traditional interpretations of Islamic law recognized a divorced woman's right to part of shared property and to alimony. The law provides divorced women preference in custody for children up to seven years of age; however, divorced women who remarry are forced to give the child's father custody. After the child reaches seven years of age, the father is entitled to custody (except in cases in which the father was proven unfit to care for the child). The court determined custody in disputed cases.” [4a] (Section 5)
23.13 On 1 September 2008, the Women’s Learning Partnership stated that “Iran’s current Civil Code [pdf] is highly discriminatory, restricting women’s custody rights and ability to divorce, lowering the minimum age of marriage for females, requiring the husband’s permission for the wife to work outside of the home, and legalizing temporary marriages. The new proposed Family Protection Bill marks further regression.” [137a]
23.14 On 2 September 2008, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported that Iran’s parliament had indefinitely delayed voting on the “Family Support Bill” which had been returned to the assembly’s legal committee for “more work”. Susan Tahmasebi, an activist involved in the One Million Signatures campaign to improve women’s human rights in Iran, was reported as saying that:
“…she and other activists had lobbied against the measure, which they said would allow a man in the Islamic Republic to take a second wife without the agreement of his first wife. The bill also covered other family issues. But she cautioned that the bill, put forward last year by the government of conservative President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, had not been withdrawn and may be sent back to the legislature…Under Iran's Islamic law, men can have up to four wives, but polygamy is not widely practiced and is seen by many Iranians as unacceptable… Tahmasebi said activists also objected to other aspects of the proposal, including imposing taxation on money [dowry] the husband agrees in a marriage contract to pay his wife upon her request [Mehriyeh]” [42h]
See also Mehriyeh below
23.15 A Guardian news article dated 17 June 2009, observed that, despite the current “authoritarian backlash” in the country, there had been, over the past year:
“…a series of small but significant victories: Iranian MPs have declined to enact laws that would have further facilitated men's ability to indulge in polygamy; new measures are presently under discussion to enhance women's inheritance rights; and reforms are also being put forward to end the insulting, discriminatory rule in compensation cases, where a family of a dead woman will be awarded literally half of the compensation paid for a man's death.” [16c]
Return to contents

Go to list of sources
Political rights
23.16 The USSD Report 2008 observed that: “Women cannot serve as president or as certain types of judges. Women may be consultant and research judges without the power to impose sentences.” [4a] (Section 5)
23.17 Associated Press reported on 4 September 2008 that: “There are numerous women in parliament and other political offices, though they are barred from the presidency and the more powerful, clerical post of supreme leader.” [135a] However, women’s representatives in Parliament constitute only 4.1 per cent, and women’s participation in governance and decision-making positions remains limited. (UN, 1 October 2008) [10a] (p13) Although Iranian women currently hold seats in parliament they do not enjoy the same political rights as men. (Freedom House report 2008) [112c]
23.18 It was noted in the Center for Iranian Studies (CIS) report of September 2007 that:
“In September 2005, soon after he came into office, Ahmadinejad nominated Nasrin Soltankhah, a member of Tehran’s City Council, as his advisor for women’s affairs and a non-ministerial member of his cabinet. Soltankhah was also named the new director of the Center for Women and Family Affairs. Difficulties in approving his nominees by the parliament (Majlis) and demands by women organizations have also encouraged Ahmadinejad to appoint another woman as a non-ministerial cabinet member. Fatemeh Javadi was nominated as vice president to head the Department of Environment.
“Upon these nominations Ahmadinejad has stated that ‘Iranian women symbolize freedom and chastity’ and that they are able to effect political, social and cultural decision-making. Yet he neglected to mention that women are consistently overlooked for ministerial posts and they are still not eligible for the presidency. Ahmadinejad also neglected to mention that in the elections to the seventh Majlis in 2004, women did not manage to increase their numbers. Merely eleven women legislators were elected to the current parliament (comprised of 290 representatives), in comparison with 13 women MPs in the previous body.” [94a]
23.19 On 3 September 2009, BBC News reported that Iranian MPs had approved the nomination of the first woman minister in 30 years. Marzieh Vahid Dastjerdi will be health minister. Two other female nominees, Fatemeh Ajorlou for welfare and social security minister and Susan Keshavarz for education minister were rejected. [21a] Marzieh Vahid Dastjerdi, a gynaecologist regarded as a conservative, described her appointment as “an important step for women”. (Keesing’s News Digest for September 2009) [12a] A Guardian article dated 6 October 2009 noted that although the present parliament was “monopolised by hardliners”, it included 13 women [out of 290 members]. [16d]
Return to contents

Go to list of sources
Social and economic rights
23.20 The USSD Report 2008 stated that “The government enforced gender segregation in most public spaces, including medical care, and prohibited women from mixing openly with unmarried men or men not related to them. Women must ride in a reserved section on public buses and enter public buildings, universities, and airports through separate entrances.” [4a] (Section 5)
23.21 The USSD Report 2008 continued:
“The penal code provides that if a woman appears in public without the appropriate Islamic covering (hijab), she can be sentenced to lashings and/or fined. However, absent a clear legal definition of appropriate hijab or the punishment, women were at the mercy of the disciplinary forces or the judge. Pictures of uncovered or immodestly dressed women in the press or in films were often digitally altered.
“The government intensified its campaign against members of the ‘One Million Signatures’ campaign, which activists launched in 2006 to promote women's rights and demand changes to discriminatory laws. In a report released October 20, UN secretary-general Ban Ki-Moon noted ‘an increasing crackdown in the past year on the women's rights movement.’”

[4a] (Section 5)