US Sanctions on Iran Contravene Int’l Law: Official
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – An Iranian official said the unilateral coercive measures by the US and its allies against Iran violate the basic principles of international law, the UN Charter and the fundamental human rights.
“Unilateral coercive measures are in flagrant contradiction with the principle of the rule of law,” Secretary of Iran's High Council for Human Rights Kazem Gharibabadi said at the 51st session of the UN Human Rights Council on Wednesday.
He underlined the need for the establishment of effective mechanisms in order to hold the sanctioning states to account, stressing that the step must be an integral part of any appeal and legal discourse on the negative impacts of sanctions, Press TV reported.
“How come certain states, which are always pretending to support the human rights of Iranians, have the face to encroach upon the rights of Iranians on a large scale by imposing and supporting cruel sanctions or remaining silent about them?” the official added.
Gharibabadi stressed that it was an absolute necessity to establish a conceptual framework for a compensation and grievance mechanism in order to make reparations to the victims of human rights violations as a result of sanctions.
He underlined that significant attention should be paid to the impacts of unlawful unilateral coercive measures.
In the same meeting, Alena Douhan, UN Special Rapporteur on the negative impact of unilateral coercive measures on human rights, said the proliferation of secondary sanctions has resulted in a growing fear of sanctions and over-compliance with unilateral sanction regimes, leading to serious adverse effects on the human rights of millions of people around the world.
“Today the world faces a proliferation of secondary sanctions, applied extraterritorially to states, entities or individuals for their presumed cooperation or association with sanctioned parties,” she noted.
Earlier this week, Douhan released the final report of her visit to Iran, criticizing unilateral sanctions imposed on the country, calling for the removal of unilateral coercive measures (UCMs), and asking the world body to come up with mechanisms of compensation for victims of such measures.