Iran: Canada-drafted UN rights resolution lacks legal credibility

Iran has condemned a United Nations resolution on the human rights situation in the country, urging Canada, which is among the co-sponsors of the motion, to end its genocide of indigenous people and complicity in the Israeli regime’s crimes against the Palestinians instead of focusing on human rights in other countries.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh made the remarks on Thursday, one day after the UN General Assembly Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) approved the anti-Iran draft resolution by a vote of 79 in favor to 30 against, with 71 abstentions.

He said the document repeated “baseless allegations” against the Islamic Republic and was founded on “false information and dishonest generalizations.”

The resolution, he added, is based on weak and scattered votes, most of them garnered under political pressure and various threats.

Canada and other main supporters of the motion are addicted to the failed defamation project against Iran, Khatibzadeh said. “Unfortunately, some actors, who have a long history of gross human rights violations, including by selling weapons to authoritarian, occupying and aggressor regimes, are using human rights as a tool to advance their own political ambitions and intentions.”

He said Iran condemned the move by the Canadian government and the other co-sponsors of the resolution as “a clear example of the abuse of transcendent human rights concepts and values ​​to advance short-sighted political motives,” adding that the measure lacks “legal credibility and effect.”

The spokesman also said such “immoral and unjustified activities” do not help promote respect for human rights on the world stage and “merely fuel negative stereotypes and political labeling against nations.”

He further advised the Canadian authorities to stop supporting the US government’s economic terrorism against the Iranian nation and hosting the corrupt and the thieves, who have looted the Iranian people’s wealth, instead of showing hypocritical compassion for human rights in the Islamic Republic.

The Canadian authorities should try to reform their inhumane practices inside their own country and abroad, stop the systematic policy of genocide against their indigenous people, and stand accountable for their complicity in the Zionist regime’s crimes against the Palestinians, Khatibzadeh said.

He also emphasized that strong religious faith, strong cultural infrastructure, sound legal frameworks, and deep-rooted social practices, as well as protection of human rights are among the main pillars of the Islamic Republic.

The official further drew attention to a number of steps that Iran had taken to promote human rights both at home and at an international level, including fighting terrorism, drug trafficking and racial discrimination in the international arena, hosting a large number of immigrants from violence-stricken countries, making judicial reforms and increasing the participation of women in senior management positions.

Earlier, Zahra Ershadi, deputy permanent representative of Iran to the UN, called the anti-Iran resolution an “insincere political move” that exposes a deliberate policy of incitement to “Iranophobia.”

SS