TEHRAN: In 2024, at least 31 women were executed in Iran, marking the highest annual count in 17 years, according to Oslo-based Iran Human Rights (IHR). This alarming statistic underscores systemic gender discrimination in the country’s judicial system.
Report Highlights Gender Bias in Judicial System
The IHR report, titled “Women and the Death Penalty in Iran: A Gendered Perspective,” emphasizes how judicial bias and gender disparity severely affect women on death row. Approximately 70% of the women executed for murder were responding to prolonged abuse, coercion, or violence by male partners.
Iran’s legal framework devalues women’s testimonies, considering them worth only half of a man’s. Additionally, laws fail to address critical issues like domestic violence or marital rape, often neglecting mitigating factors.
Rights Group Demands International Action
Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, director of IHR, condemned the executions as evidence of entrenched systemic gender inequality. He urged the international community to take swift action against these judicial injustices and called attention to Iran’s “gender apartheid.”
Transparency around executions has also worsened. Only 26% of women’s executions were officially acknowledged, and this figure has dropped further to 12% in recent years, the report added.
Marginalized Groups Disproportionately Affected
Women from marginalized ethnic groups, particularly in Sistan and Baluchistan, face disproportionate risks. Their experiences highlight how poverty and ethnic discrimination intersect with judicial biases, worsening their plight.
Rise in Overall Executions
Iran carried out 930 executions in 2024, according to the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center, marking a stark increase compared to 811 in 2023 and 579 in 2022. Since its establishment in 1979, the Islamic Republic has used the death penalty to maintain control and suppress dissent.
The IHR report excludes the significant number of female political prisoners executed during the 1980s and cases of women stoned or hanged for adultery in the regime’s earlier decades. The findings underscore the urgency for global attention to Iran’s systemic judicial injustices, particularly the plight of women on death row.