Country of origin information report Iran January 2010

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Violence against women
23.58 A report by the Norwegian Country of Origin Information Centre (Landinfo) published on 22 May 2009 stated that:
“The tradition of Muslim cultures to regard problems and violence within families as a private and internal family matter is both a common and a widespread problem. This is also the case in Iranian culture and society. The religious and socio-cultural situation means that many girls and women do not see the option of getting help from outside the family circle or from the authorities as a real alternative. Lacking awareness of legal rights combined with strong family ties, fear of social shame and stigmatisation, threats and financial dependence lead many girls and women to give in to their family’s wishes, remain in unhappy marriages or commit suicide.” [33b] (p9)
23.59 UNHCR reported in their ‘Comments on the Iran Country Report of April 2005’ of August 2005 that the:
“UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women, Yakin Erturk, urged Tehran to adopt a national action plan to promote and protect human rights which would emphasise the elimination of violence against women. Although they had seen some advances, Iranian women still face violence in and outside the home and are blocked from defending their rights by discriminatory laws and an unfair justice system, Erturk said. ‘Discriminatory laws and malfunction in the administration of justice result in impunity for perpetrators and perpetuate discrimination and violence against women,’ she said. Erturk issued her criticism in a preliminary report for the world body’s Human Rights Commission – which holds its annual six-week session in Geneva in March and April – following a government-approved visit to the country.
“She said she was ‘troubled by the widespread practice of arrest for political opinion, including of female human rights defenders, and for ‘moral offences’,” and by the failure of the judicial system to enforce safeguards ensuring fair trials. Erturk had also seen an emerging civil society with active female lawyers, journalists and academics ‘engaged in working to promote human rights and prevent violence against women.’ But she said: ‘In the family, women face psychological, sexual and physical violence’ which existing laws did little to protect against, while divorce and custody of children were difficult for abused wives to obtain. In the wider community, victims of rape face numerous obstacles in accessing justice, she said. Women risk punishment for adultery if they fail to prove rape, and can face death for killing a rapist in self-defense (Reuters, U.N. expert criticises Iran on women’s rights, executions, 8 February 2005).” [3h] (p3-4)
23.60 The Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, its causes and consequences, in his report of the Mission to Iran dated 27 January 2006 noted that:
“Violence against women in Iran is ingrained in gender inequality, which is upheld and perpetuated by two factors: (a) patriarchal values and attitudes based on notions of male supremacy, and (b) a State-promoted institutional structure based on gender-biased, hard-line interpretations of Islamic principles. While the former is a universal and historically rooted phenomenon, the latter is particular to Iran and is rooted in gender politics and policies prevalent in the country. Both factors, however, represent a male-dominated society with male-empowering laws and practices. While the official ideological underpinning of the State gender discourse rests on the premise that women in the Islamic Republic have been attributed [sic] with honour and due dignity, this very ideology has served to rationalize subordinating women, discriminating against them and subjecting them to violence. Furthermore, it is instrumental in silencing defiance and enforcing compliance.
“The ruling clergy, in their reading of the sharia that shapes both the attitudinal as well as the institutional structures, have tended towards conservative, gender-biased interpretations.
“This has been the source of divisive debates in the political arena between the hardliners and the reformists. The Sixth Majlis was reportedly a turning point for the articulation of reformist politics of gender in Iran. Within this process…some positive change has occurred in the laws and the administration of justice. However, gender-biased provisions and practices that prompt women’s vulnerability to violence in the private as well as public spheres are still the norm.” [10ad] (p10)
23.61 Book 4 of the Islamic Penal Code refers to the practice of diyat (blood money) being given as compensation for murder. Article 300 states that “The blood money for the first- or second-degree murder of a Muslim woman is half of that of a murdered Muslim man.” [66a] This is reiterated by the USSD Report 2008 which observed that “The blood money paid to the family of a female crime victim is half the sum paid for a man.” [4a] (Section 5)
23.62 The USSD Report 2008 further stated that:
“Rape is illegal and subject to strict penalties, but it remained a problem. Spousal rape is not illegal.
“Spousal abuse and violence against women occurred. According to a study published during the year using 2005 data, 27 percent of women reported being physically abused during the survey year. Abuse in the family was considered a private matter and seldom discussed publicly, although there were some efforts to change this attitude. Domestic violence was not specifically prohibited by law, but some nongovernmental shelters and hotlines existed to assist victims…There was a lack of reliable data on the prevalence of sexual harassment in the country; however, media reports indicated unwanted physical contact and verbal harassment occurred. There are laws addressing sexual harassment in the context of physical contact between men and women. In June, thousands of university students in Zanjan protested an alleged episode of sexual harassment of a student by a university official.” [4a] (Section 2c)
23.63 The Landinfo report of 22 May 2009 observed that
“The Western European model of a crisis centre/shelter for women does not exist in Iran. There are, however, state institutions for single women, prostitutes, drug addicts and children and young people who have run away from home. These institutions are run by the national welfare organisation and offer protection, welfare services and rehabilitation programmes of varying quality for a transitional period. The number of such institutions in existence at any given time, and in which provinces they are found, is not public knowledge. The Iranian authorities are generally unwilling to provide the public with information about social situations and problems that may generate criticism of Islamic law and the Islamic Republic.” [33b] (p10)
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Honour killings

23.64 A report by the Norwegian Country of Origin Information Centre (Landinfo) published on 22 May 2009 noted that access to information from Iran on “honour-related violence” and “honour killings” is very limited:
“The primary sources of available open information are Iranian and are representatives of civil society, the authorities and media run by exiled Iranians. The Iranian authorities do not permit human rights groups such as Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch, foreign researchers or journalists to travel to Iran on their own to obtain information about honour killings or other forms of violence against women. One exception to the authorities’ policy of refusing foreigners entry to Iran, was the trip made by the UN Special Rapporteur to Iran in 2005 (United Nations Commission on Human Rights 2006).” [See below] [33b] (p5)
23.65 UNHCR commented in their ‘Comments on the Iran Country Report of April 2005’ of August 2005 that “‘Honour crimes’ are known to be occurring in Iran. It happens among Arab, Kurdish and Azeri minorities more than Farsi ethnicity…There are no reports of suggesting availability of state protection to woman risking ‘honour killings’.” [3h] (p4)
23. 66 The UN Special Rapporteur’s report dated 27 January 2006, based on her visit to Iran from 29 January to 6 February 2005, noted that
“The Special Rapporteur found that some of the cases of self-immolation in the city are linked to the lack of legal protection for women victims of violence, lack of shelters, difficulty in obtaining a divorce, child custody laws that favour the father and pervasive gender discrimination throughout society.
“The self-immolation incidents are also said to be related, in some cases, to honour crimes, which are particularly common in Ilam and Khouzistan province. According to statistics provided by a consultant to the governor of Khouzistan in 2003, there have been 45 cases of honour killings of women under the age of 20 in one tribe alone. In 2001, a total of 565 women lost their lives in honour-related crimes, of which reportedly 375 were staged as self-immolation cases of women who were forced to set themselves on fire.” [10ad] (p11)
23.67 The USSD Report 2008 stated that: “According to a police official quoted in a domestic newspaper during the year, 50 honor killings were reported during a seven-month period, although official statistics were not available. The punishment for perpetrators was often a short prison sentence.” [4a] (Section 5)
23.68 The Amnesty International report on human rights abuses against the Kurdish minority of July 2008 stated that “Self-immolation is a practice that occurs in all the areas of Kurdish settlement, where it is more common than in other parts of Iran. Some alleged suicides may have been staged to cover up ‘honour’ killings.” [9e] On 28 August 2008, Iran Human Rights Voice (IHRV) reported that, in the first half of 2008 [1387], the number of Kurdish women victims of honour killings had increased. According to the Committee Against Honor-Related Violence, the number of murders in the first five months of 2008 stood at six; however, Parvin Zabihi, an advocate for women in the Kurdistan section of Iran, was reported as saying that the numbers were probably higher as details of three further murder cases had been received. [11b]
23.69 The Landinfo report of 22 May 2009 observed that:
“The available source material suggests that honour killings primarily occur among tribal peoples such as Kurdish, Lori, Arab, Baluchi and Turkish-speaking tribes. These groups are considered to be more socially conservative than the Persians, and discrimination against women in attitude and in practice is seen as being deeply rooted in tribal culture. The majority of these groups are Sunni Muslims and they live in the socioeconomically least developed and geographically most isolated areas of Iran.” [33b] (p7)
23.70 The Landinfo report continued:
“There is also information about honour killings being carried out in the capital Tehran. According to an Iranian source, the greater part of women killed in Greater Tehran i[n] 2008 were killed by their husbands. This type of killing accounted for 35 per cent of all killings in Greater Tehran in a six-month period (IHRV 2008b). On the basis of the information available, there is nothing to suggest that the Iranian authorities actively try to combat honour killings…A woman who is threatened with honour killing or subjected to other forms of violence must seek help on her own. The community around her will not come to her assistance unless she asks directly for help. Whether it is possible to ask for help depends on where a women lives. In some parts of Iran, the physical and geographical conditions are such that fleeing is not possible in practice.
“The extent to which a woman can get help depends on a number of factors; such as what the case concerns, how old she is, where she lives, what she wants and to what extend she is able to mobilise parts of her own family network to plead her case and negotiate in the conflict. Depending on the nature of the case, she can for example seek help from a women’s network, provided that such a network exists where she lives and that she is aware of it. Or she can file a suit in a family court or report the matter to the police. If she goes to the police, the scope of the violence and threats will be decisive in determining whether she receives help and what kind of help she is offered. She is responsible for presenting evidence that she is in fact threatened by violence, which in certain cases can be impossible. The attitudes of the police or a local judge may have a decisive impact on her chance of being given real protection.” [33b] (p9-10)

Government suppression of women’s rights organisations

23.71 An Amnesty International report dated 28 February 2008 stated:
“In April 2007, Minister of Intelligence Gholam Hossein Eje’i publicly accused the women’s rights movement of being part of an enemy conspiracy to bring about a ‘soft subversion’ of the Islamic Republic – a charge that women’s rights defenders roundly reject. Since that time, women’s rights groups and other NGOs that receive assistance from international donors, such as the Dutch organization Hivos, have been closed down and their directors and workers have been questioned by the Iranian security authorities about their work and financial affairs.” [9aah]
23.72 The Human Rights Watch 2008 World Report stated that: “The government … closed the offices of Rahi Institution, a nongovernmental organization providing legal and social aid to women victims of violence.” [8ai]
23.73 An article on the UN News Centre dated 27 November 2008 reported that: “Defenders of the rights of women are facing a progressively difficult situation, including harassment and intimidation in the course of their non-violent activities, the two UN Special Rapporteurs said in a joint statement. ’Peaceful demonstrators have been arrested, detained and persecuted with prison sentences having been imposed on many of them.’” [10e]
23.74 Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) reported on 3 September 2008 that “Dozens of activists have been detained over the last two years and several have received mostly suspended prison terms.” RFE/RL also reported that most of the women’s rights activists detained since the One Million Signatures campaign started in 2006 had been freed within days. [42c]
23.75 Human Rights Watch, in an article dated 28 October 2008, said that “… the Judiciary has prosecuted more than 100 women’s rights activists over the past three years and continues to detain, intimidate, and prohibit from traveling a number of other women’s rights activists, particularly those involved in the One Million Signatures Campaign for Equality.” [8d]
23.76 The USSD Report 2008 noted that “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." [4a] (Section 5)
23.77 In an article dated 19 September 2008, the International Federation for Human Rights stated:
“On September 2, 2008, the Tehran Revolutionary Tribunal sentenced Ms. Parvin Ardalan, Ms. Nahid Keshavarz, Ms. Jelveh Javaheri, arrested on December 1, 2007 and since detained at Evin Prison and Ms. Maryam Hosseinkhah, arrested on November 18, 2007 and since detained at Evin Prison, to six months' imprisonment for ‘publishing information against the State’, for having written articles for two online newspapers that defend women's rights in Iran: Zanestan and Tanir Bary Barbary. They have been released on bail after having appealed their sentences.” [56a]
23.78 The Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s (FCO) Human Rights Report for 2008 stated that
“We are concerned by growing repression against women’s rights defenders, who are peacefully campaigning to redress gender-based discrimination in Iran. Negin Sheykholeslami, a Kurdish woman campaigning for women’s rights, was recently released on bail having been detained since October and denied access to medical care. Dozens of women connected to the Campaign for Equality (which aims to collect a million signatures in Iran and calls for an end to legalised discrimination against women) face harassment and arrest for ‘actions against national security’ and ‘propaganda against the system’. At the end of 2008, several campaign activists remained in detention without charge or trial. A student, Esha Momeni, was recently released on bail having been charged with national security offences for documenting the campaign’s activities for her thesis.” [26b] (p143)
23.79 The Human Rights Watch (HRW) 2009 report on Iran, covering events in 2008, stated that:
“The government escalated its crackdown on women’s rights activists in 2008, subjecting dozens of women to arbitrary detention, travel bans, and harassment. Eight women’s rights activists were arrested in June as they were commemorating a 2006 meeting on women’s rights that was broken up by police. In October an Iranian-American student researching women’s rights in Iran, Esha Momeni, was arrested and held for some three weeks in Tehran’s Evin prison. Security agents seized her computer and footage of interviews she had conducted with women’s rights activists.” [8f] (p462)
23.80 The HRW report also noted that:
“In September [2008] an appeals court in Tehran upheld prison and lashing sentences against two women’s rights activists, Massoumeh Zia and Marzieh Mortazi Langrudi, for taking part in a 2006 demonstration demanding equal rights. Four women were also sentenced earlier in the year to six months in jail each for writing articles for feminist websites.

In January 2008 the authorities released Maryam Hosseinkhah and Jelveh Javaheri from Evin prison, where they were serving sentences for ‘disturbing public opinion’ and ‘publishing lies.’ Two other activists, Ronak Safazadeh and Hana Abdi, remain in detention in Sanandaj on charges of ‘endangering national security.’ Prior to their arrest they were active members of the Azarmehr Association of the Women of Kurdistan, a group that organizes capacity-building workshops for women in Iranian Kurdistan.” [8f] (p462)

23.81 The Human Rights Watch 2009 report on Iran stated that, in October 2008 “One Million Signatures” campaign leader, Sussan Tahmasebi, was prevented from boarding a plane by security agents who also confiscated her passport. She was not charged with any crime. [8f] (p462) Sussan Tahmasebi’s travel ban was lifted in February 2009. (International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, 10 April 2009) [52b] (p10)
23.82 A Guardian article dated 6 October 2009 stated that the One Million Signatures Campaign:
“… is a peaceful protest which, unfortunately, the Iranian government has refused to tolerate. More than 50 campaigners have been prosecuted and some deprived of basic social rights, such as being able to travel freely or leave the country. The most severe sentence has been handed down to Aliyeh Eghdam Doust, who is serving a three-year prison term. She is one of the activists arrested in the June 2006 protest in support of women's rights in Haft-e-Tir Square in Tehran.” [16d]
23.83 The HRW 2009 report noted that:
“The Judiciary has also prosecuted women involved in peaceful activities on behalf of the campaign for ‘disturbing public opinion,’ ‘propaganda against the order ’and‘ publishing lies via the publication of false news.’ In September [2008] an appeals court in Tehran upheld prison and lashing sentences against two women’s rights activists, Massoumeh Zia and Marzieh Mortazi Langrudi, for taking part in a 2006 demonstration demanding equal rights. Four women were also sentenced earlier in the year to six months in jail each for writing articles for feminist websites.” [8f] (p462)
23.84 The UN Secretary-General’s Report on the situation of human rights in Iran, dated 23 September 2009, stated that:
“On 27 November 2008, the Special Rapporteurs on the situation of human rights defenders and on violence against women issued a joint statement expressing deep concern regarding the ongoing crackdown on women’s rights defenders in the Islamic Republic of Iran, noting that peaceful demonstrators had been arrested, detained and persecuted, with prison sentences having been imposed on many of them. They noted that the Government continued to harass and intimidate women’s rights activists involved in the ‘one million signatures’ campaign and to prevent them from travelling.” [10g] (p13)
23.85 The Report on the Status of Women Human Rights Defenders published on 10 April 2009 by the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran (ICHRI), detailed pressures faced by women human rights defenders since June 2008. The report stated that:
“Women’s rights activists advocating for legal reforms and the protection of women’s rights have been increasingly targeted. Since our last report [5 May 2008], the most prominent human rights defender, Shirin Ebadi, has come under fire; a prison sentence of a woman’s rights activist has been implemented for the first time in the history of the Islamic Republic of Iran; and other women’s rights activists have been targeted, harassed, arrested, summoned, tried and barred from travel.” [52b] (p1)
The ICHRI report gives more detailed information on the treatment received by individual women human right’s activists.
23.86 On 5 November 2009, Amnesty International reported that “In recent days, at least 10 members of the Campaign for Equality – a grassroots women’s rights initiative - have been summoned to appear before a branch of the Revolutionary Court in connection with their peaceful activities on behalf of women’s rights in Iran. Some have been banned from travel abroad.” [9p]
23.87 The Women’s Learning Partnership for rights, development and peace is an international, non-governmental organization (NGO) in Special Consultative Status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations. Their website provides information on the treatment of women activists from March 2007 to the present.
See also Freedom of speech and media and Human rights institutions, organisations and activists. For more recent information see Latest news.
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Health and welfare
Abortion
23.88 A CIRB report of February 2001 stated that the position of whether it is legal to perform abortions is unclear in law, and many doctors are reluctant to proceed. This is irrespective of a fatwa by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that abortion may be undertaken in cases of medical necessity, such as when thalassemia has been detected. Illegal abortion clinics have been prosecuted in recent years. [2e]
23.89 A BBC report of 12 April 2005 noted that “Under the existing law, the illegal abortionist and the mother in question can be sentenced to between three and ten years in jail.” [21q]
23.90 On 30 September 2008, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life reported that:
“Abortion has been illegal in Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Although there are no explicit exceptions to this prohibition, Iranian law generally allows acts that are performed to save the life of a person; thus, it is commonly understood that abortion is illegal except when necessary to save the mother's life. In 2005, the Iranian parliament passed a measure allowing abortions within the first four months of pregnancy in cases of fetal impairment that would result in economic burden; the measure was ultimately blocked by the Iranian Guardian Council.” [63]
23.91 A report in Iran Focus News dated 9 May 2005 stated that “According to local press reports, at least 80,000 illegal abortions are carried out in Iran each year but some believe the actual figure could be far higher. “ [76c]
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