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DEFENDERS
3
Editorial
Editor’s Note
Achieving a satisfactory level of human rights in the world is one of the
most important wishes of human rights defenders, and endless efforts have
been made towards this aim. The point that is contemplating is that universal
solutions for the improvement and promotion of human rights, since in some
instances it has been selective and also influenced by politics, the way for the
presentation of justification has been open for human rights violators. As one
of the most important international mechanisms for the promotion of human
rights, the Universal Periodic Review has placed interactive dialogue and
cooperation in its top objective and tries to stay clear of political influences.
Iran’s first round of the UPR took place in 2010, and received 189
recommendations on various subjects. The second round of the UPR on Iran is
currently under way, and Iran is reviewing the 291 recommendations to accept
them or reject them. The UPR on Iran gave us a good opportunity in order to
dedicate this issue of Defenders as a special issue on this subject. The subject
of the second round of the UPR, comparison of the first round with the second
round, a statistical look at the given recommendations to Iran in the second
round are some of the subjects that in articles and notes our researchers have
tried to analyse.
Also since parts of the first round recommendations were to do on subjects
such as minorities, refugees, women and etc. through short research articles to
be in the level of presenting in this issue of Defenders, it has been attempted
to help human rights issues with a balanced look. Since NGOs have an active
role in the UPR process, in this issue we had a glance at summary of the
reports of some of the NGOs who submitted reports to the second round of
the UPR on Iran.
In the years following the first round of the UPR, the ODVV has conducted
numerous activities towards recommendations accepted by Iran, which are
presented as reports in this issue. In spite of this issue of Defenders being
a special issue on the UPR mechanism, but its coincidence with extremists
violence which has resulted in Islamophobia in the world, and the letter of the
Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran addressed to western youths
is also published in full in this issue.
With the hope for the day that such activities as these result in the reduction
of violence in the world and the promotion of human rights.