They made it clear that the unilateral coercive measures that the United States has imposed on Iran violate international law, Multipolarista reported.
A group of UN special rapporteurs stressed that these sanctions have a “negative impact” on “the enjoyment of the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment in the Islamic Republic of Iran and on the right to health and the right to life.”
Violating Iranians’ right to life is a roundabout diplomatic way of saying that US sanctions are killing them.
The UN experts sent a formal letter to the United States condemning its sanctions and requesting that it investigate and remove them.
The special rapporteurs expressed their “serious concerns about the US sanctions as a significant contributing factor in Iran’s environmental degradation, which negatively affects Iranian people’s rights to a healthy and sustainable environment, to health, to life, and to an adequate standard of living.”
They added that “US sanctions impede the enjoyment of the right to education” in Iran.
The US government publicly claims to support the struggle against climate change and pollution, and on paper, it recognizes that people have the right to a clean environment.
But Washington’s “sanctions against Iran contradict what seems to be a clear US position on this matter,” the UN experts said.
“It is time for sanctions that impede Iran’s ability to improve the environment and reduce the ill effects on health and life, to be eased or lifted completely so that Iranians can access their right to a clean environment, the right to health and to life, and other rights associated with favourable environmental conditions,” they insisted.
The UN special rapporteurs noted, "Since 1979, the United States of America has imposed a broad and complex network of stringent financial, economic, and trade sanctions against Iran, including a comprehensive trade ban, significant measures to isolate Iran from the international financial and commercial system, as well as secondary sanctions against non-US parties that engage in dealings with Iran."
SKH/PR