The HRC voted to accept the Report on the human rights situation Iran from its Special Rapporteur Javaid Rehman and extended Rehman’s reporting mandate by another twelve months.

Rehman was pleased with the result of Tuesday’s vote in the Council. Talking to Iran International after the vote, Rehman said he welcomed the strong vote accepting his Report’s findings and recommendations and extending his mandate.

Rehman said that the vote, stronger this year than in some previous years, showed that the Council recognized that what he called the “alarming and concerning” human rights situation in Iran had become much worse since the death of Mahsa Gina Amini than in the previous reporting period.

The Islamic Republic has been criticized by the UN rights body and international organizations defending human rights for decades. In the latest round of protests, security forces killed more than 500 civilians and arrested at least 20,000 based on estimates presented in detail by monitoring groups.

The Resolution’s summarized Rehman’s original report and its recommendations. These deplored the “widespread, repeated and persistent” violation of human rights in the Islamic Republic and called on Iran to end its “systematic impunity” and hold human rights violators accountable in line with international law.

The Resolution also called for Iran to stop discrimination and violence based on gender and ethnicity and belief. The Resolution expressed its “deep concerns” at the surge of executions and called on Iran to honor its own agreed legal obligations under international law and to halt all executions for offences “that do not meet the threshold of the most serious crimes or for alleged offences committed before the age of 18 years.”

Twenty-three countries, mostly in Europe, voted in favor of the Resolution; eight against, among which were China, Pakistan and Cuba. China justified its No vote on the grounds that it was always opposed to any interference in the internal affairs of states. Pakistan said the Resolution was politically driven and human rights investigations were “best done with the consent of their country concerned”.

This last point would make the Special Rapporteurs job redundant, since Iran has refused both to recognize or acknowledge the mandate given by the UN to the HRC’s Special Rapporteur. Eritrea, Kazakhstan , Vietnam, Bolivia and Bangladesh made up the refuseniks.

India and Qatar were among the 16 abstaining voters, which could both sit on their hands and yet let the Resolution pass. The abstainers included a bloc of sub-Saharan African states. Of these, South Africa said it recognized the part played by women in its own struggles for freedom and encouraged Iran to enhance its cooperation with the UN High Commission for Human Rights. But despite its concerns with what it called the ‘geo-politics’ of the Resolution, South Africa nevertheless did nothing to block the Resolution. Nor did India, which last time voted against the Special Rapporteur’s mandate being extended.

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