Iran reportedly executed more than 900 people last year, including dozens of women and five juveniles. It’s the most people the country has killed in nearly a decade, according to numbers compiled by the United Nations Human Rights Office.
The country hung more than 30 women. Some of those women were reportedly convicted of killing their husbands after fending off rapes or being forced into marriage.
Human rights officials said one of the executed women strangled her husband after discovering him and his friends raping her young daughter.
Government-sanctioned killings
The U.N. report revealed Iran executed around 40 people in a single week in December 2024.
Most of the government-sanctioned killings were for drug-related offenses. Still, Iran also executed activists and people connected to the 2022 protests, which were sparked by a 22-year-old woman’s death in police custody.
Iran reportedly executed nearly 90 people in August 2024 after the presidential election, which included some individuals sentenced to death for political and security-related charges.
The U.N. Human Rights chief called the numbers “deeply disturbing” and urged Iran to stop all further executions with the ultimate goal of ending the death penalty.
Violating international law
A U.N. Human Rights Office spokesperson said the office compiled the figures using data from several organizations, including Iran’s Human Rights Activists News Agency (IHRANA), Iran Human Rights (IHR) and Hengaw, a Kurdish human rights group.
IHR said this is the most women it has seen executed since it began tracking numbers 17 years ago.
IHRANA said it found Iran killed five juveniles. Capital punishment for juveniles is a violation of international law.
According to human rights organization Amnesty International, Iran accounted for nearly 75% of all executions globally in 2023.
The group said the numbers exclude China, which it believes executes thousands of people each year, but whose death penalty data is classified.
