Mai Sato, UN Special Rapporteur on Iran, Begins Her Work

Mai Sato, a Japanese lawyer, announced that she has begun her work as the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Iran. On Thursday, August 2, she wrote in a post on X in Persian: 'I have started my mission as the Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in the Islamic Republic of Iran today. I was moved by all the messages I received after this news was announced by the UN Human Rights Council.' She continued by expressing gratitude for the efforts of Javid Rahman, the former rapporteur over the past six years, and stated her commitment to participate in constructive dialogue to uphold human rights obligations for Iranians. At the end of her post, Sato expressed her commitment to address all human rights violations 'impartially' during her mission and to use credible sources in her assessments. She succeeded Javid Rahman as the Special Rapporteur on Iran on the last day of the 56th session of the UN Human Rights Council. Born in Tokyo, Sato holds a PhD in law from the UK and has previously been based there. For the past five years, she has collaborated with the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra, focusing on issues such as 'capital punishment,' 'judicial violations,' and 'international human rights law.' Sato has studied capital punishment in countries such as Japan, Malaysia, India, and Zimbabwe, and is also a co-founder of the non-profit organization CrimeInfo in Japan, which informs about capital punishment and criminal justice issues. The role of the Special Rapporteur is to examine the precise human rights situation in Iran, and she will attempt to travel to Iran and report her findings to the UN Human Rights Council. However, in past decades, the Islamic Republic has not allowed UN human rights rapporteurs to enter Iran and prepare reports. The last time a UN human rights rapporteur visited Iran was in the 1990s, before the UN Human Rights Commission was transformed into the Human Rights Council. Since July 2018, this responsibility has been held by Javid Rahman, a Pakistani-British lawyer. In his recent report, he referred to the high number of arbitrary arrests, executions, and unlawful killings in the Islamic Republic and mentioned the massacre of political prisoners in the 1980s by the Iranian government as 'heinous crimes against humanity and genocide.' This report was published on July 23 regarding the Islamic Republic's actions against its opponents in the years 1981, 1982, and 1988.