Arcdh
Azerbaijani National Minority in Iran : Struggle for Human Rights
55th regular session of the Human Rights Council
26 February 2024 – 5 April 2024
Item 3: General debate on the promotion and protection of all human rights, civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, including the right to development
14 March 2024
Minority nations in the Islamic Republic of Iran are without access to some 30 civil, political, economic, social, cultural, developmental and environmental, inalienable human rights conferred by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The Arc Association takes up the challenge of explaining life without the body of these rights.
Consider the nation of Azerbaijan in their native lands in Iran:
Azerbaijani activists press for their rights, but their voices are being silenced. Hence the minority nation of Azerbaijan is left to live at the whims and discretion of the Iranian authorities.
Iranian authorities act from a position of strength, function with impunity and behave with hegemony, discrimination and racism towards Azerbaijanis. One exemplar is the ongoing 44-year campaign of Azerbaijanis contesting the lack of the right to be educated in their mother language.
Another is the 20 years of struggle to prevent the deliberate desiccation of Lake Urmia.
Today, there is little Azerbaijani trust in the Iranian authorities; they suffer from water shortages, polluted water resources, frequent electricity outages at critical times, widespread hunger among the poor, child marriage and hopelessness amongst the younger generations.
We urge this conference to take note of the suppression by the Iranian authorities of the whole body of rights for the nation of Azerbaijan.