The ODVV’s letter to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights

Iran is racing to curb the rapid, deadly spread of the new coronavirus, but these efforts are complicated by tight economic restrictions imposed by the United States and frustrations among an increasingly embattled population.

Following a statement by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on the cooperation of all countries in the fight against the Corona virus, the Organization for Defending Victims of Violence wrote her a letter to on lifting comprehensive sanctions against Iran in order to address this situation internally.
Here is the text of the letter.

Your Excellency, Ms. Michelle Bachelet, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights,
According to your statement on Coronavirus on March 6th, in the Human Rights Council, “To effectively combat the outbreak means ensuring that everyone has access to treatment, and is not denied health care…”. This is while the people who are living in countries targeted by economic blockade, cannot have access to health care the same as the people living in other countries of the world. As an Iran based NGO, we clearly see the challenges created by US sanctions and this form of medical terrorism for the people living in Iran. Prevention of banking transactions, leads to lack of access to basic medical treatment, and purchase of medical equipment, such as X ray and CAT scan machines or maintenance of the available machinery and equipment.

The ODVV organization has sent communications to the High Commissionaire for Human Rights as well as the Special Rapporteur on health several times and has expressed serious concerns over the detrimental effects of comprehensive sanctions on people, the sanctions that the Special Rapporteur on Unilateral Coercive Measures (UCM)s consider as economic warfare. Unfortunately, no feedback is given to our organization by human rights mechanism of OHCHR.

At the moment, we hope that your reiteration on necessity of international cooperation to combat corona leads to a stronger international will and more concrete action for ending comprehensive Unilateral Coercive Measures and the pain of civilians in UCM target countries.

Now that the international emergency coupled with maximum sanctions and economic pressure is causing a loss of health which is also mentioned in paragraphs 10 to 12 of the recent report of Special Rapporteur on Iran, the world should join hands to fight corona virus and immediately lift the sanctions on all sectioned countries including Iran. The organization calls on Your Excellency to publicly condemn all UCMs especially when they are kept in place at the time of emergency.

Finally, according to the Declaration on Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Co-operation among States in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations, that the states should refrain from any form of political or economic coercions against the political independence of other states and the General Comments offered by the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) that states must respect human rights abroad (12,para.36; GC 14,para.39; GC 15,para.31; GC 19,para.53). Therefore, the organization calls on the Human Rights Council committees and special procedures to study the ways to remove, minimize and redress the adverse impact of comprehensive sanctions that impose disproportionate pressures on the target populations now threatened with the new virus.

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