U.N. human rights chief Volker Türk expressed alarm Tuesday at the sharp increase in executions in Iran and called on the Islamic Republic to halt all further executions of people facing the death penalty for a range of crimes.
“It is deeply disturbing that yet again we see an increase in the number of people subjected to the death penalty in Iran year-on-year,” Türk said in a statement. “It is high time Iran stemmed this ever-swelling tide of executions.”
According to the high commissioner’s office, at least 901 people reportedly were executed in 2024, including some 40 in one week in December.
It says the highest number of executions in recent decades was reached in 2015 when at least 972 individuals were executed in Iran. After a decline in the number of executions, it notes that the numbers have risen sharply since 2022.
“At least 853 people were executed in 2023,” Liz Throssell, spokesperson for the high commissioner, told journalists at a briefing in Geneva, adding that the 2024 number of 901 executions “is alarmingly, shockingly high.”
The human rights office reports that most of the executions last year were for drug-related offenses, but that “dissidents and people connected to the 2022 protests also were executed.”
That’s a reference to the nationwide protests that erupted following the Sept. 16, 2022, death in police custody of Mahsa Amini, who was arrested by the so-called morality police for the alleged improper wearing of the hijab.
The International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran, which presented a report to the U.N. human rights council in March 2024 found “credible figures” of up to 551 deaths, including at least 49 women and 68 children had “occurred in 26 out of the 31 provinces of Iran over multiple months.”
Throssell said there was a rise in the number of women executed last year. “We understand that at least 31 women were reportedly executed in 2024. Now, that marks the highest number in 15 years.
“The majority of cases involve charges of murder. A significant number of the women were victims of domestic violence, child marriage or forced marriage. A number of them were convicted of murdering their husbands,” she said, adding that “The method of execution, we understand, is by hanging.”
She said it was difficult to know how much recourse people accused of crimes had to the judicial system because “of the opacity of the system” in Iran. “I mean, people will have lawyers, but it is very hard to determine how free and fair a particular trial may be,” she said. “So, this is why we believe it is so important to be speaking out on the executions and also to highlight that there are people who are awaiting execution, who are on death row.”
“We are concerned because of this lack of transparency around what happens in Iran with regard to the sentencing and the carrying out of the death penalty,” she said.
Human Rights chief Türk doubled down on his concerns by urging Iranian authorities to place a moratorium on the use of the death penalty “with a view to ultimately abolishing it.”
“We oppose the death penalty under all circumstances,” he said. “It is incompatible with the fundamental right to life and raises the unacceptable risk of executing innocent people.
“And, to be clear, it can never be imposed for conduct that is protected under international human rights law,” he asserted.
International standards prohibit the imposition of the death penalty for any but the “most serious crimes” — crimes of extreme gravity, involving intentional killing — and “may be imposed only when the guilt of the person charged is based upon clear and convincing evidence leaving no room for an alternative explanation of the facts.”
