Global Issues

Iran

• Iran missing an estimated 100,000 women due to preference for male children

• Source, transit, and destination country for men, women, and children subjected to sex trafficking.

• Iranian women and children subjected to sex trafficking in Pakistan, Turkey, Qatar, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Iraq, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom.

• NGOs report religious leaders and immigration officials involved in sale of young girls and boys between nine and 14 years old to men in Gulf states, particularly Bahrain, for commercial sexual exploitation. A young girl or boy could be sold for US$15 to $20 or, in Iran, for as little as $5.

• Iranian women are trafficked internally for forced prostitution and forced marriage.

• Iranian and Afghan children living in Iran are trafficked within the country for commercial sexual exploitation.

• Reports of women and girls being sold for marriage to men in Pakistan for the purpose of sexual servitude.

• Violence and legal and societal discrimination against women common.

• Law permits a man to kill his adulterous wife and her consorts if he is certain she consented.

• Adultery remained punishable by death by stoning with women buried to their necks.

• According to 2005 data, 52.7% of women reported being physically abused during their married lives.

• 22 percent of infertile women had experienced physical or sexual abuse because of infertility.

 

Advocacy:

• Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shin Ebadi’s Defenders of Human Rights Center.

 

Sources: U.S. Department of State 2010 Human Rights Report, U.S. Department of State Trafficking in Persons Report 2011; Stephan Klasen and Claudia Wink, University of Munich: A Turning Point in Gender Bias in Mortality? (2001)