Alirza Quluncu, Voice of America, June 29, 2015
The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) has requested additional information from Iranian officials regarding the situation of children’s rights in Iran, specifically focusing on non-Persian children, the discrimination they face, and the issue of education in their native language. This request is in preparation for a meeting in January 2016 to assess the state of children’s rights in Iran.
The CRC, which organized a four-day working group meeting recently to evaluate Iran’s laws and current situation in line with the Convention on the Rights of the Child, will review Iran’s official report at the main meeting scheduled for January 2016.
According to a document published on the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) website, Iran is required to provide additional information in three sections by October 15, 2015: 1) responses to questions, 2) a brief report, and 3) information and statistics.
In the first section, the Committee has asked questions regarding the measures taken by the state to prevent widespread discrimination faced by non-Persian ethnic groups in Iran, including Arabs, Turks, Baluchis, and Kurds, especially in relation to their daily lives, as well as issues such as unlawful detention, surveillance, arrest, torture, execution, and their right to education.
Additionally, the Committee has asked whether the state has taken necessary steps to ensure non-Persian children can receive education in their native languages: “Please inform us about the measures taken to provide education in the mother tongues of ethnic minorities.”
The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has requested statistics related to violence, honor killings, sexual abuse, children working in the informal sector, street children, children held in prison, including those sentenced to death, early marriages before the age of 18, adoption and marriage of adopted children, children with disabilities, incidents related to student-teacher relationships, and children who do not attend school. In these statistics, the child's age, gender, region, and ethnic background are also to be specified.
Link to the original text in Turkish on the Azerbaijani section of Voice of America:
BMT İrandan qeyri-fars uşaqların üzləşdiyi ayrı-seçkiliyə dair məlumat istəyir