The State of Children’s Rights in Iran: A Tragic Contrast to Global Standards

October 8 marks International Children’s Day in Iran, a day dedicated to highlighting the rights and well-being of children. While countries around the world celebrate the occasion on different days, the United Nations has officially declared November 20 as World Children’s Day. This day serves as a global reminder of the importance of protecting children’s rights and ensuring their well-being. However, in Iran this commemoration often seems more like a bitter irony than a real celebration.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) prioritizes five key areas for the protection and development of children worldwide: child survival and development, access to quality education, gender equality, protection from violence and abuse, and prevention of HIV/AIDS. But when one compares these priorities with the reality facing millions of Iranian children under the current regime, the vast disparity becomes undeniable.

The Iranian Regime’s Attitude Toward Children: A Legacy of Exploitation and Abuse

Since their inception, the ruling authorities in Iran have demonstrated a deeply worrying attitude towards children. From the beginning of the Iran-Iraq War, tens of thousands of children were sent to the front as expendable soldiers, marking the beginning of a long history of exploitation. Laws that allow forced marriages of children, the execution of minors and the brutal practice of torturing children in front of their parents (or vice versa) demonstrate a systematic disregard for the rights and dignity of children.

This pattern of behavior demonstrates the regime’s underlying philosophy: Under Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, people – especially children – are viewed not as individuals with rights, but as tools to serve the state’s authoritarian interests. Social, economic and legal rights have been systematically suppressed for decades, with children particularly at risk. In such a system, the very idea of ​​protecting children’s rights or ensuring their access to education, healthcare or basic professional rights is simply non-existent. Therefore, celebrating International Children’s Day under these conditions seems like a cruel joke.

The 2030 UNESCO Controversy: When Progress Meets Resistance

One of the most telling examples of the regime’s stance on child welfare was its vehement opposition to the UNESCO 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, particularly its provisions on education. When it came time to implement UNESCO’s 2030 Document, Khamenei and his allies launched a fierce campaign against it, denouncing it as an attempt to introduce “Western humanist teachings” that contradicted their “Islamic, God-centered values.”

The UNESCO document called for the removal of violence from school curricula – a proposal that outraged the regime’s leaders. For them, the idea of ​​removing concepts like martyrdom and jihad from textbooks went to the heart of their ideological indoctrination efforts. Likewise, the agenda’s call for gender equality in education was perceived as an attack on the regime’s entrenched policies of gender segregation. The leaders falsely claimed that the UNESCO agenda aimed to erase traditional family values ​​and impose Western ideals of equality between men and women. In response, the regime worked tirelessly to block implementation of the 2030 Agenda, prioritizing its ideological control over children’s well-being and educational progress.

The children of a nation in crisis

While the Iranian regime devotes its energy to combating global standards for children’s education, it remains disturbingly silent about the plight of millions of Iranian children who suffer from extreme poverty, neglect and exploitation. A growing army of working children, street children, uneducated children, addicted children and child carriers represent the heartbreaking reality for many. Some children are sold into exploitative working conditions before birth, underscoring the sheer desperation many families are in under the corrupt and live under the negligent rule of the regime.

The systematic failure to address these issues, coupled with the regime’s focus on maintaining its own power and wealth at the expense of the population, is the root cause of this humanitarian crisis. Instead of investing in the future of its children, the regime hoards national resources, allowing corruption to flourish and millions of children to be deprived of basic human rights.