The UN's human rights council voted to extend an inquiry into Iran on Friday after what investigators called its deadliest crackdown yet on protesters.
The council held an emergency session in Geneva at the request of Germany, Britain and Iceland. In a resolution, it called on an independent fact-finding mission to document abuses by the Iranian regime for the sake of "future legal proceedings".
The resolution extended by two years the mandate of a UN investigation set up in 2022 after the previous wave of protests. It passed by 13 votes to five. Egypt, Qatar and Kuwait abstained, while Iraq voted against.
Opening the session, human rights chief Volker Turk said thousands of people, including children, had been killed in Iran's "brutal repression" of the protests. He called the crackdown "a pattern of subjugation and overwhelming force that can never address people’s grievances and frustrations."
The UN fact-finding mission on Iran said the priority now is "gathering evidence of alleged human rights violations and holding perpetrators to account".
It said the violence "appears to have been the deadliest crackdown by the government of Iran against its people since the 1979 revolution".
Iran’s representative on the council, Ali Bahreini, gave a figure of 3,117 dead during the protests, which he said had been “deliberately transformed into organised violence”. He dismissed the emergency meeting as a “pressure tool”.
In a letter drafted by Iceland and presented to the council, countries expressed a "serious concern about the ongoing human rights situation in Iran".
They described an "unprecedented violent crackdown on peaceful protests by security forces, including credible reports of unlawful killings of protesters, including children, and use of excessive and lethal force, leading to the death of thousands of peaceful protesters".
Members of the council also expressed concern over "arbitrary arrests ... enforced disappearances ... and the communication blackout intentionally imposed by Iranian authorities".
The fact-finding mission's chairwoman, Sara Hossain, said credible reports indicated that thousands of people have been killed since the protests erupted, and at least 24,000 people have been arrested, including children and journalists.
“The priority must now be to gather evidence and establish whether human rights violations and crimes under international law, including crimes against humanity, may have occurred,” Ms Hossain said. “The only way to prevent the recurrence of such abuses is through securing accountability and breaking the cycle of impunity,” she added.
The resolution also called for the fact-finding mission to conduct an "urgent investigation into allegations of recent and ongoing serious human rights violations and abuses, and crimes perpetrated in relation to the protests".
Iranian authorities are accused of imposing a deadly crackdown on sweeping protests that began on December 28 and spread to all 31 provinces. Demonstrations were fuelled by the country's economic woes, but evolved into calls for regime change in one of the biggest challenges to Iran's clerical rule since 1979.
The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (Hrana) said on Thursday it has verified 5,002 deaths linked to the regime's clampdown, including 4,714 protesters. Almost 10,000 more deaths are under review amid a continuing internet blackout that has entered its third consecutive week, with limited connectivity in some areas.
While the Iranian government has blamed "armed terrorists" backed by Israel and the US for many of the deaths of civilians and members of the security forces, rights groups have documented a deadly clampdown on demonstrations by the regime, with published videos and field reports confirming "direct gunfire against protesters", according to Hrana.
