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The UN Human Rights Committee has reminded Iran of its obligations, as a signatory of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), to provide religious freedom to its citizens, including to adopt a religion of their choosing and to change religions.

In its concluding remarks following last month’s public assessment of Iran’s compliance with the ICCPR, the Committee said Iranians of all faiths should be able to “manifest [their] religion or belief without being penalised” and that members of non-recognised religious minorities must be “protected against harassment, discrimination and any other human rights violation”.

Iran must “immediately release those imprisoned for exercising their right to freedom of religion or belief”, and ensure they are provided with “adequate compensation”, it said.

The Committee said it “remains concerned by numerous reports indicating that religious minorities are victims of state-sanctioned human rights violations, including discrimination, arbitrary detention, torture, harassment and confiscation of property solely for practising their faith”.

It also called on the Islamic Republic to “repeal or amend” the amended Articles 499 and 500 of the penal code, which have been used to imprison several Christians since their introduction in 2021.

The Committee said it also “remains concerned by lengthy detention periods without trial, incommunicado detention in unacknowledged detention centres, and the lack of access to lawyers and communication with families, in particular with regard to journalists, human rights defenders, lawyers, members of minority groups, dissidents and protestors”.

And it highlighted “the deterioration of the situation of persons deprived of their liberty in prisons and formal and informal places of detention, including unsanitary conditions, overcrowding, bad quality of food and water, denial of medical care, as well as by torture and ill-treatment, including prolonged solitary confinement”. 

These concluding remarks follow two three-hour-long public hearings last month, at which a delegation from the Islamic Republic was asked to respond to concerns regarding its alleged non-compliance with the ICCPR, including Article 18, which relates to freedom or religion or belief.

Ahead of the meeting, the Committee had asked Iran to respond to “continuing reports of the restricted right to freedom of conscience and religious belief and discriminatory attitudes and practices against religious minorities, particularly those not recognized in law, including through the prohibition of holding religious services in Persian, closing of houses of worship on national security grounds and arbitrary arrests and detention of religious minorities, including Christians, for their practice of religious beliefs”. 

In its written response ahead of the meeting, the Islamic Republic claimed religious minorities in Iran, including Christians, “perform their own religious teachings freely”, and their human rights are respected, provided they “refrain from engaging in activities that breach public order, public safety and public security”.

Article18 submitted a joint report to the Committee ahead of the meeting, noting the “multiple layers” of religious-freedom violations experienced by Christians and other religious minorities in Iran, and suggesting several questions for the Committee to pose to the Islamic Republic.

You can read more about what was said during the two three-hour-long sessions last month here.

Traditionally, many refugees have been relocated to safe countries through the UN mechanism, but this system has been paused in the past few years, and now only a small percentage of those relocated are Iranians, and an even smaller percentage are Iranian Christians.

This means that there are few clear prospects for these Christians to be relocated. But one of the very few options available for them is to be accepted with a refugee-sponsorship visa to a country like Canada. The United States also recently created a similar scheme, based on the Canadian model.

In Canada, an organisation, charity or group of individuals can apply to become a Sponsorship Agreement Holder (SAH). Once they have this licence, the SAH can sponsor refugees for the first year of their relocation to Canada, which means providing for their housing and other expenses while they learn the language and are familiarised with their new context.

WHAT DOES THE SPONSORSHIP ENTAIL?

The sponsorship is for one year, and costs roughly 16,000 Canadian dollars per person, with a reduced per-person rate for families.

Thankfully, some families and individuals have already made their way to Canada through this scheme, but many others are stuck in Turkey because no church knows about them or has heard their story.

OUR ROLE

In response to this need, Article18 has compiled around 100 briefings of families and individuals stranded in Turkey.

Article18 has been asked to help them find potential homes in churches and communities that are willing to accept them.

So if you are a leader or member of a church or SAH in Canada, please contact us and we’ll be more than happy to introduce you to a family in need. Or consider adopting a refugee.

WHAT IF YOU DON’T LIVE IN CANADA?

There is also opportunity for individuals, organisations and churches outside Canada to contribute to this process, as some licence-holders in Canada have the willingness to help but are short of finances.

Article18 could help coordinate this multilateral relief operation by connecting sources of funding with churches and individuals in need.

There have already been examples of churches in Canada offering their licence to relocate some individuals, with churches in other countries being willing to undertake the financial commitment.

Again, if you can help in this regard, please don’t hesitate to contact us or consider adopting a refugee.

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Uncertainty and procedural inconsistencies:

Many refugees in Turkey suffer from a lack of clarity regarding their application procedure, and a clear timeline within which their claims will be processed. As per the law, an in-person interview should normally be conducted within 30 days from the date of registration and, the assessment of the application should be finalised no later than six months after the date of registration by the Presidency of Migration Management (PMM). However, many asylum-seekers have been waiting for their in-person interviews or the final outcome of their application assessment for years, and have no clear idea when this process may be completed. The refugee waits – often for many years – to be summoned for an interview, which can last several hours. The aim of the interview is to assess the claims of the refugee and establish if there were genuine reasons for them to leave their country of origin, and whether they have “a well-founded fear of persecution” on religious grounds should they be returned. A translator is present during the refugee status determination (RSD) interview, as well as an interviewer, but several interviewees have criticised the procedure, claiming that their Turkish interviewer lacked understanding about evangelical Christianity and the oppression experienced by adherents in Iran. Some also said their faith and conversion were ridiculed, raising the question of whether a religiously inclined Muslim interviewer can objectively assess the refugee claim of someone they regard as an apostate.

Lack of work and exploitation:

According to the Turkish Ministry of Labour and Social Insurance (Çalışma ve Sosyal Güvenlik Bakanlığı), asylum-seekers are eligible to obtain a work permit six months after registration, and those with refugee status do not require any special permit to work. However, refugees are a cheap source of labour, and employers are often unwilling to register them legally and be obliged to pay additional costs for social insurance, etc. Refugee workers are thus left with little option but to take on illegal work, most commonly as factory workers or on construction sites. This informal and illegal arrangement leaves them vulnerable to exploitation: their employment can be terminated without notice, wages withheld, and their employers are not liable for work-related injuries. Meanwhile, employers are required to employ a minimum of five Turkish nationals in the workplace for every one foreign national (the “1:5 rule”), which unfortunately leads many employers to refrain from employing foreign nationals and to prefer Turkish nationals.

The right to access public healthcare services:

In 2020, the Turkish government restricted its health-insurance provision to one year following registration, compelling refugees to resort to private healthcare if they have the resources, or to forgo healthcare altogether. Cultural and language barriers are another complication, as well as a lack of information about the Turkish healthcare system.

Discrimination:

A strong Turkish nationalist Islamist movement has arisen, capable of violent actions against those seen as apostates and enemies of the state. Meanwhile, the initial warm reception granted to Syrian refugees and others, including those from Iran seeking international protection, is being replaced by a growing hostility.

Children’s welfare and education:

The children of refugees have access to state education, but language issues and reported discrimination – on both ethnic and religious grounds – have meant that many children, including Iranian Christians, have been left without opportunities for education.

Threat of deportation:

Since 2018, when the Turkish authorities began processing refugee claims instead of the UNHCR, it is noticeable that many Iranian Christians with credible claims for international protection have been rejected. The threat of deportation aggravates the trauma already felt by refugees.

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Iran has for many years been listed among the worst countries for persecuting Christians, featuring prominently every year on Open Doors International’s World Watch List of the top 50 persecutors and the US State Department’s Countries of Particular Concern for “egregious violations of religious freedom”.

As Article18 has highlighted with the #Place2Worship campaign, Persian-speaking Christians have nowhere to worship collectively in Iran, being prohibited from attending the churches of the recognised ethnic Assyrian and Armenian Christians, and facing sentences of up to 10 years in prison for worshipping together in their homes in what have become known as “house-churches”.

As a desperate measure, many of these Christians have subsequently and very unwillingly said goodbye to their families and homeland and stepped into the unknown.

The most obvious route for many of them has been to end up in neighbouring countries, such as Turkey, where they have continued to suffer other forms of pressure – for example not being granted work permits or access to healthcare, while many countries that once offered a safe haven to refugees have now closed their doors even to the most legitimate seekers of asylum.

Meanwhile, since 2018 the UNHCR has delegated the responsibility of interviewing asylum seekers to the Turkish immigration service, under whose authority Iranian Christians are increasingly reporting harsh and unfair treatment.

Some, despite having had their claims approved by the UNHCR, have been refused in the second round of interviews by Turkish officials and are now at risk of deportation back to Iran.

A lot of these families left Iran when their children were very young, and many have been unable to find suitable schools for their children and have spent the past five, six or even seven years just desperately hoping they will soon be relocated to another country.

Meanwhile their hopes, aspirations and livelihoods have been negatively impacted.

And all the while, it is clear that there are so many individuals and churches worldwide that would be willing to help if only they were provided with credible information from organisations with insight and verifiable data.

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Iran’s violations of the rights of religious minorities, including Christians, was one of the issues raised by a panel of UN experts this week as they questioned a delegation from the Islamic Republic on its compliance with international law.

Article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which Iran has ratified, calls for states to provide citizens with “freedom of thought, conscience and religion”, including freedom to “have or to adopt a religion or belief of his choice”, and freedom “either individually or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in worship, observance, practice and teaching”.

A panel of experts from the UN’s Human Rights Committee, which monitors states’ compliance with the ICCPR, assessed the Islamic Republic’s performance during two three-hour-long sessions on 9 and 10 October.

Article18 submitted a joint report to the committee ahead of the assessment, noting the “multiple layers” of religious-freedom violations experienced by Christians and other religious minorities in Iran, and suggesting a number of questions for the committee to pose to the Islamic Republic. 

Among the suggested questions, we asked the committee to query how “cases of minority faith adherents being tried on national security grounds for the legitimate practice of their faith”, and Article 13 of Iran’s constitution – which recognises only Zoroastrians, Christians and Jews – are consistent with the ICCPR.

We also asked for clarity on how Persian-speakers, “whatever their ethnicity, may freely gather to worship as envisaged by Article 18 of the Covenant”, and how many Christian converts are currently detained and facing charges under the amended Articles 499 and 500 of the penal code.

Finally, we suggested that the delegation was pressed for a response on the question of where Persian-speaking Christians might worship, free from fear of arrest or imprisonment, and whether Iran has plans to revise its civil code to allow non-Muslims to inherit from Muslims, or Muslim women to marry non-Muslim men.

What did the committee ask?

Korean committee member Changrok Soh, during the second session on 10 October, asked for a response from the Islamic Republic to “extensive reports that recognised and unrecognised religions alike, including Baha’is, Christians, Jews, Gonabadi dervishes, and Sunni [Muslims], among others, have faced state-sanctioned human rights violations, such as harassment, arbitrary arrest, and detention, torture, and confiscation of property solely for [practising] their faith”. 

“Please comment on the reported state-sanctioned human rights violations against religious minorities, and how such actions are compatible with the state party’s obligation under the covenant,” he added. 

Mr Soh also noted how, contrary to the claims of the Islamic Republic, “apostasy continues to be considered a hadd offence”, punishable by death.

“With this in mind, what legislative and executive measures does the state party [Iran] have in place to guarantee the rights of freedom of religion for religious minorities, including those not recognised by the constitution?” he asked.

Mr Soh also made reference to Articles 499 and 500 of the penal code, stating that “the new amendment[s] … now allows for further suppression of religious freedom and freedom of expression, especially for religious minorities”. 

“As such,” he said, “I wish the delegation to provide the committee with detailed statistics on those convicted under the amended articles 499 bis and 500 bis of the penal code, and to clarify whether there are plans to repeal such amendments.” 

Mr Soh concluded by highlighting the “continued violations of rights and discriminations” suffered by the Baha’i community, and asked what measures were being taken to ensure their protection. 

How did Iran respond?

Iranian-Armenian MP Ara Shaverdian was put forward by the delegation to respond to the questions relating to Article 18 of the covenant, but did not specifically name any of the unrecognised minority groups, such as Baha’is or Christian converts, only saying that Iran “strongly denied” allegations regarding “the certain cult which is not considered a religion” – a term often used by Islamic Republic spokespeople to refer both to the Baha’is and also members of house-churches.

Mr Shaverdian also did not respond specifically to the question regarding apostasy, while in response to the questions regarding Articles 499 and 500, he only said the laws related to “sectarian and religious hate-mongering, which has been criminalised in different countries”.

“The laws of the country are done free of any discrimination and [people are] convicted [only] because of the committing of crimes based on the prevailing laws,” he added.

He did not mention that several Christians have been imprisoned under the amended laws, including his fellow Iranian-Armenian, Anooshavan Avedian, who is serving a 10-year prison sentence for engaging in “propaganda contrary to and disturbing to the holy religion of Islam”.

Mr Shaverdian instead chose to focus on how each of the recognised religious groups, including Christians of Armenian and Assyrian descent, have parliamentary representation, and listed the number of places of worship provided for each of them.

“Iran is committed to the preservation and protection of religious minorities, in line with this covenant,” he said. “Christians have 380 churches, Jews have 16 synagogues, and Zoroastrians have 78 temples.” 

He added that there are also 15 associations for Zoroastrians, 30 each for Armenians and Assyrians, and 12 for Jews.

He did not mention that the hundreds of thousands of Persian-speaking Christians in Iran have no place to worship.

As Article18 has reported previously, it is common practice for the Assyrian and Armenian representatives of Iran’s parliament to be put forward to defend the policies of the Islamic Republic, and this is not the first time that Mr Shaverdian has made such remarks.

Mr Shaverdian later posted on X, formerly Twitter, that he had “emphasized our unwavering adherence” to the ICCPR, including Article 18, and “noted Iran’s resolute commitment to upholding the rights of religious minorities, deeply embedded in our constitution (Articles 12, 13, 14, 19)”.

1/ Privileged to be part of 🇮🇷’s delegation at the #139th session of the #UN’s Human Rights Committee. At the session held on Oct 9-10, I emphasized our unwavering adherence to #ICCPR, specifically highlighting Article 18 concerning freedom of thought and religion.

— آرا شاوردیان | Ara Shaverdian (@AraShaverdian) October 18, 2023

Follow-up questions

In his follow-up to Mr Shaverdian’s comments, Mr Soh said he wondered whether there might have been an issue with the translation, as he “couldn’t get [much of the] information that I asked”, including “regarding freedom of conscience and religious belief”, and specifically the “detailed statistics on those convicted under the amended articles 499 bis and 500 bis of the penal code”. 

Mr Soh added that he would “appreciate if you can provide [the answers] in written format, so that we can review [them]”. 

As the meeting concluded, chairperson Tania Maria Abdo Rocholl told the Iranian delegation they had up to 48 hours to send in any “complementary information”.

Other elements of the covenant queried by the committee included reported violations of the rights to life, freedom of movement, privacy, access to justice, freedom of expression, peaceful protest, and freedom of association, as well as alleged violence against women and gender inequality, corruption, and the use of torture.

Several victims of rights violations were specifically named by the committee members, including Armita Geravand, who is in a coma following an incident reminiscent of that which claimed the life of Mahsa Amini last year, but the only victim mentioned by name by an Islamic Republic spokesperson was Ms Amini, and only for judicial spokesperson Mehdi Hadi to claim that her death “had absolutely no relation to the use of force of any kind”.

The head of the delegation of the Islamic Republic, Reza Najafi from Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, concluded by professing the Islamic Republic’s “unwavering commitment to upholding the principles enshrined in the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights”. 

But judicial adviser Khosrow Hakimi, who organised the delegation’s responses to the committee, said at the outset that he “want[ed] to emphasise” that the provisions of the covenant would only be implemented if “compatible with the resolutions of [Iran’s] constitution”.

You can watch the entire sessions below.

Iranian Christians continue to be among the most affected by the significant drop in refugee resettlement to the United States in recent years, according to a new report.

Just 112 Iranian Christians were resettled to the US last year, 95 per cent fewer than 2016, the last year when resettlement figures remained at their historically high level, according to the report, ‘Closed Doors’, which was co-authored by Christian charities World Relief and Open Doors US.

An Iranian woman, referred to as “Mana”, was one of those resettled in 2016, and is featured as the first of four case studies in the report, which is the second edition of a report first published in 2020.

Mana, like many other Iranian Christian refugees, fled first to Turkey, where she and her youngest son lived in “challenging conditions” for two and a half years before being accepted for resettlement.

Meanwhile, her oldest son was still in prison in Iran, and though he has since been released and also fled Iran, and Mana has applied for him to be resettled with her, the report states that “the wait time will likely be at least eight years” as “the odds of being selected for refugee resettlement have grown slim in recent years”.

“Facing the threat of imminent deportation,” the report adds, this son recently “embarked on a dangerous journey to seek asylum in Europe” and at the time of writing had made it as far as Albania, “with hopes of eventually finding freedom in Germany”.

Why the decline in refugee resettlement?

The report explains that between 1980, when the Refugee Act was passed, and 2016, around 80,000 refugees arrived in the US each year, with the maximum intake – or “refugee ceiling” – set at around 95,000. 

This “ceiling” was reduced each year between 2017 and 2020, when the US resettled fewer than 10,000 refugees for the first time since the resettlement programme was created.

Then in April 2021, the “ceiling” was set by the newly installed president, Joe Biden, at just 15,000, which “surprised and dismayed many refugee and religious freedom advocates”, according to the report.

And while after this “pushback” the ceiling was increased, by the end of 2021 the initial maximum of 15,000 refugees had still not been reached.

Since 2021, the numbers have been steadily rising, the report notes, with the US on track to resettle around 60,000 refugees this year. However, with the official ceiling now more than double that figure (125,000), the report authors call for overseas processing and domestic resettlement infrastructures to be rebuilt “to ensure that this goal is met”. 

“The positive trend in the number of persecuted Christians being resettled seems likely to continue,” the report notes. “Still, the U.S. has yet to return to the number of persecuted Christians being resettled with relative consistency prior to 2017—and further policy changes, such as a reduction in the overall refugee ceiling, could abruptly slam the door shut on persecuted Christians seeking refuge as occurred beginning in 2017.”

What else does the report say?

The authors note that both the number of displaced people and number of Christians experiencing “high levels of persecution and discrimination” have risen since 2020, and while “not every persecuted Christian flees their home … and not every displaced person is persecuted on account of their religion … these numbers certainly are related”.

Meanwhile, America is “no longer the safe haven for displaced persons that it once was”. Last year, the number of Christians resettled to the US from the top 50 countries on Open Doors’ World Watch List – with Iran at number eight on this list of countries where Christians are most persecuted – was “down 70 percent from 2016”.

“Last year, 9,528 Christians were resettled from these 50 countries, down from 32,248 in 2016,” though this was still “a significant rebound from the low point of 5,390 Christian refugees resettled from these countries in 2020”.

And of the four countries mentioned as reference cases, Iran once again ranked the worst, with a 95% fall in resettlement compared to 2016, ahead of Iraq (94%), Myanmar (92%) and Eritrea (85%).

The report, while focusing on Christians, also notes that members of other faith groups – including Baha’is, Zoroastrians and Sabaen Mandaeans – have also been affected.

It further notes that asylum-seekers who have yet to be recognised as refugees are often even more “vulnerable to hardship, exploitation and injustice, as they wait to be recognized by a host country”.

Meanwhile, “asylum cases can be difficult to win, even when the asylum seeker has legitimately fled persecution … because the burden of proof in an asylum case is on the asylum seeker, and often they lack documentary evidence of what they claim to have experienced”.

What recommendations are made?

The authors conclude by asking Christians to pray and advocate for those who are persecuted on account of their faith, and US officials:

• To consistently prioritize the advancement of international religious freedom, and to leverage diplomatic influence to urge all countries to reduce religious persecution and discrimination.

• To restore the U.S. Refugee Resettlement program, both consistently setting the annual refugee ceiling at a high level such as 125,000 and rebuilding the overseas processing and domestic resettlement infrastructure to ensure that this goal is met.

• To ensure that those persecuted for their faith continue to have access to the U.S. Refugee Resettlement program alongside those persecuted for other reasons.

• To reject changes to asylum processing that reduce access to due process and present new barriers to those with credible fears of persecution from accessing protection in the United States.