Iran’s Foreign Ministry has rejected a recent report by the United Nations (UN) on the situation of human rights in Iran, saying the report lacks “legal standing.”
“A report that has been issued [in line] with the political aims of certain countries lacks legal standing,” Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Marziyeh Afkham said on Sunday.
Reports on human rights situations, Afkham said, “must be prepared based on [information obtained from] authoritative and valid sources; this is while this report has in many instances cited non-impartial and biased sources and even ones with ulterior motives.”
“Iran had presented documented and definitive responses to the draft of the report, and it was expected that the submitted response – which had been prepared with the aim of informing the compilers of the [UN] report of the realities of human rights in Iran and helping compile a balanced and fair text – would be appropriately considered in the final text,” Afkham said.
The final report has “wrongly judged” the situation of human rights in Iran and has missed the opportunity for an “impartial assessment and analysis” of the situation.
The UN report’s lack of due attention to such cases as the destructive effect of unilateral and illegal sanctions by some countries on the issue of human rights in Iran, Iran’s progress in the fields related to women, the necessity of fighting the widespread smuggling of narcotics and relevant crimes, the variety of the activities of civil society and NGOs in Iran, as well as the cultural, traditional and religious roots of Iranians, and many other cases have contributed to its invalidity, the Iranian spokeswoman said.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry official said the Islamic Republic of Iran has had on its agenda continuous cooperation with the international bodies to promote and support the human rights situation and is committed to expanding its interaction with the UN bodies.
The report, in which a number of human rights allegations against Iran has been made, was presented to the 70th United Nations General Assembly, which opened on September 15.