UN Human Rights Council to hold urgent Iran meeting

GENEVA: The United Nations Human Rights Council will hold an urgent special session this week on "the deteriorating human rights situation in the Islamic Republic of Iran," a spokesperson said on Tuesday.

It follows a request from Britain, Germany, Iceland, Moldova, and North Macedonia and will take place on Friday, council spokesperson Pascal Sim told reporters in Geneva.

In a letter addressed to the council's president and seen by AFP, the five countries highlighted "credible reports of alarming violence, crackdowns on protesters and violations of international human rights law across the country."

The request had received backing from more than one-third of the council's 47 members, who needed to hold a special session.

So far, 21 members are supporting the request, including Bulgaria, Chile, Colombia, France, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Spain, and Switzerland.

The request is also supported by 30 observer countries, including Argentina, Australia, Canada, Norway, Poland, Sweden, and Ukraine.

Iran is reeling from some of the biggest anti-government protests in its history and a crackdown that monitors said has killed numerous people.

The scale of the crackdown has emerged piecemeal as Iran remains under an unprecedented internet shutdown.

Iranian officials have not given an exact death toll.

The Human Rights Council is already scrutinizing Iran.

In November 2022, the UN's top rights body decided to launch an independent international fact-finding mission on Iran to investigate alleged human rights violations related to the protests that began there in September that year.

Its mandate was renewed in April last year to investigate allegations of "recent and ongoing serious human rights violations in Iran."

The probe said earlier this month it was reviewing open-source materials, including video footage and photos of the recent protests and crackdown.

This will be the 39th special session of the Human Rights Council since its founding in 2006.

The last was in November in El-Fasher, Sudan, and the previous one in February last year in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

The Human Rights Council holds three regular sessions a year, totaling at least 10 weeks.

The next regular session is scheduled from Feb. 23 to April 2.