GENEVA – UN experts* today called on Iranian authorities to immediately halt all executions, warning that Iran is among a shrinking group of States that still execute, and by far the most prolific per head of population.
“Iran has seen too much death: lives lost to war and lives taken by their own State,” the experts said.
In January 2026, security forces killed thousands of protesters – conduct the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission found amounted to crimes against humanity. “What happened cannot be undone, but what happens to those now facing execution lies entirely within the authorities’ control.”
No one arrested over the protests should be executed, regardless of the accusations brought against them. “The cases brought to our attention are so riddled with procedural unfairness and underlying gross human rights violations, including torture, enforced disappearances, sexual violence, coerced confessions and denial of access to lawyers of their choosing, especially at the investigation stage, that this alone should rule out execution,” the experts said.
“Iran’s death penalty is used to silence dissent, with broadly defined national security offences recasting peaceful activity as a threat. That must change,” they said. “Iran’s own history shows that grievances left unaddressed resurface, however brutally they are repressed. Executions do not end dissent, but breed the next wave of it.”
While attention focuses on security cases, most executions in Iran are for homicide, under qisas (retribution-in-kind), and for drug-related offences. Such executions are an easy substitute for the harder work of confronting the main drivers of homicides and the drug trade, including poverty, discrimination and gender-based violence. Those executed for drug offences appear to be overwhelmingly low-level couriers driven by hardship, many from marginalised ethnic minorities, and not those at the top of the trade.
Qisas removes responsibility from judges, and places life and death in the hands of victims’ families, where the ability to pay diya (blood money) can decide who lives. This is also deeply gendered: women unable to afford diya are executed for killing abusive husbands, often after child marriage and years of violence in a country where women have neither legal protection from domestic violence, nor the means to escape it.
The experts noted that consensual same-sex acts and religious offences, such as apostasy, remain punishable by death. “Regardless of the number of executions carried out for these offences, as long as these laws exist, people cannot hold, change or leave a religion or belief, or live openly according to their sexual orientation. They cannot express who they are without fear.”
The experts urged authorities to establish an immediate moratorium on executions as a first step towards abolition, to commute all death sentences and to review every case against fair trial standards.
“A moratorium would send a powerful message to the people of Iran: that the State’s use of lethal force can end, and that the country can move away from a system that has produced far too many arbitrary executions,” the experts said.
