KABUL, AFGHANISTAN – Iran has executed at least 1,000 people since January 2025, including 58 Afghan nationals, one of them a woman, UN experts said, raising concern over a sharp rise in the country’s use of the death penalty.
In a press release, UN experts, including Richard Bennett, the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Afghanistan, said the actual number of executions is likely higher, citing Iran’s lack of transparency and limited official data.
“The sheer scale of executions in Iran is staggering and represents a grave violation of the right to life,” the experts said. “With an average of more than nine hangings per day in recent weeks, Iran appears to be conducting executions at an industrial scale that defies all accepted standards of human rights protection.”
Most of those executed were convicted of drug-related offences and murder, with smaller numbers sentenced for security-related crimes and rape. At least 499 people were executed for drug offences in the first nine months of 2025, compared with 24 to 30 per year between 2018 and 2020.
The UN experts noted that international law restricts the death penalty to the “most serious crimes,” generally understood as intentional murder, and that drug offences do not meet this threshold.
Iran has long faced international criticism for its heavy reliance on the death penalty, ranking among the world’s top executioners alongside China and Saudi Arabia. The experts called on governments to take “concrete diplomatic measures” to pressure Iran to halt the executions.
The executions of Afghan nationals in Iran have increased since the Taliban returned to power in 2021. Norway-based Iran Human Rights recorded 16 Afghan executions in 2022, 25 in 2023, and more than 80 in 2024. Afghan defendants often face limited legal representation and language barriers in Iranian courts.
The death penalty has also resumed in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, where at least 10 people have been executed for murder since 2021. Human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, have repeatedly called for an immediate halt, citing violations of the right to life under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
