The President of the Human Rights Council, Ambassador Federico Villegas (Argentina), has announced the appointment of Sara Hossain of Bangladesh, Shaheen Sardar Ali of Pakistan and Viviana Krsticevic of Argentina to serve as the three independent members of the recently established Fact-Finding Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Sara Hossain will serve as chair of the mission, said a press release uploaded on the official website of Human Rights Council.
With resolution S-35/1 of 24 November 2022, adopted at a special session, the Human Rights Council decided to establish an independent international fact-finding mission, to be appointed by the President of the Human Rights Council, to ‘investigate alleged human rights violations in the Islamic Republic of Iran related to the protests that began on 16 September 2022, especially with respect to women and children’.
The three-person Mission was further requested to ‘establish the facts and circumstances surrounding the alleged violations and collect, consolidate and analyse evidence of such violations and preserve evidence, including in view of cooperation in any legal proceedings’.
The president of the Human Rights Council sought recommendations from various stakeholders and expressions of interest to find highly qualified and impartial candidates to fill these positions.
In carrying out its tasks, the Mission is mandated to engage with all relevant stakeholders, including the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran, relevant United Nations entities, human rights organizations and civil society, the release said.
The Mission members, who will serve in their personal capacities, were requested to present an oral update to the Human Rights Council during an interactive dialogue at its fifty-third session in June 2023, and to present to the Council a comprehensive report on its findings during an interactive dialogue at its fifty-fifth session, to be held in March 2024.
Of the members of the mission, Sara Hossain is a barrister in the Supreme Court of Bangladesh practising in constitutional, public interest and family law.
Shaheen Sardar Ali is a law professor at the University of Warwick, United Kingdom, focussing on Islamic law, human rights, and women and child rights.
Viviana Krsticevic has an LL.B. from the University of Buenos Aires, an M.A. in Latin American Studies from Stanford University, and an LL.M. from Harvard Law School. She is currently the Executive Director of the Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL), a civil society organization that works throughout the Americas to promote human rights using international law and the Inter-American System for the Protection of Human Rights.
