Mai Sato, a Japanese social scientist, who is to become the next UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Iran at the end of July, is a top-notch expert on criminal law with a high reputation among rights defenders.
Ms. Sato was one of eleven candidates for the post, and the preferred choice out of a final shortlist of three presented to the Council. The President of the Human Rights Council, Morocco’s Omar Zniber, has now formally offered the post to Sato, who will take up the role on 1st August (barring the unlikely prospect that she will refuse the post).
Mai Sato has a dazzling CV, focused as it is on research into law and criminology. The HRC’s Consultative Group, which oversees the appointment process, noted Sato’s skills relevant for the mandate and her “vast experience in the field of human rights”.
Sato, Japan’s 2014 Young Criminologist award winner, is currently an Associate Professor at Australia’s prestigious Monash University; she’s previously worked as a research fellow and associate professor at the Australian National University as well as Lecturer and Associate Professor at the University of Reading and Research Officer and Oxford-Howard Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of Oxford, both in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. She also worked as Research Fellow at the Institute for Crime and Justice Policy Research in the United Kingdom; Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law in Germany; and International Short-Term Expert with the United Nations Development Program in Türkiye.
Sato's appointment is keenly anticipated among NGOs and human rights workers. Sato enjoys a good reputation with those who have worked with her.
"Mai is an incredibly dedicated and compassionate anti-death penalty advocate who has done an enormous amount of work in Australia and elsewhere to draw attention to the issue of capital punishment, including in Iran," says Kylie Moore-Gilbert, the Australian academic imprisoned in Iran on spying charges in 2018.
Moore-Gilbert describes Sato as a lovely person, telling Iran International she was thrilled by Sato's new role and that "I have no doubt that she will excel in this challenging role, including shining a spotlight on the horrific spree of executions which we have witnessed in Iran in recent years."
Sato is the seventh UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Iran, a mandate she holds for three years, although it can be extended for a further three years. Javaid Rehman, Sato’s predecessor, steps down on 31st July. Rehman held the mandate for the maximum six years allowed for any one Special Rapporteur.
Professor Rehman’s are big shoes to fill: he enjoyed an exceptional reputation among his fellow lawyers and had widespread respect across the board from human rights groups and activists and within the UN itself for his meticulous and detailed work, which took on such critical importance with the deteriorating human rights situation in Iran following the crackdown on the Mahsa protests. And which saw a change in Rehman’s own approach to his role as Special Rapporteur as he became more outspoken about the scale and brutality of the crackdown.
“Professor Rahman has been an exceptionally committed and brilliant rapporteur,” Helena Kennedy, the prominent human rights lawyer, told Iran International. "He has documented and analysed the many egregious crimes of Iran against its own people over many years. His in-depth investigations into the human rights abuses by the state and his subsequent reports have been of the highest, most rigorous calibre. His mandate has come to an end with his denunciation of the killing of Mahsa Amini and subsequent arrests of women protesting the gender apartheid they experience daily. I pay tribute to his dedicated work and thank him on behalf of those who believe in freedom around the globe.”
With his emphasis on gathering evidence and data on not just the abuse of human rights in Iran but the abusers, Rehman, says Mahmoud Amiry-Moghaddam of Human Rights Watch, “put the issue of impunity and accountability on the table”. Dr Sato’s work suggests she’s very much of the same mould as Rehman. And as scrupulous in avoiding what the UN calls any real or perceived conflict of interest in her work as rapporteur.
The HRC Consultative Group noted the importance Sato placed on “independence, impartiality, integrity and objectivity” in working under the mandate, which included stepping down as director of Eleos Justice and as an independent expert of the World Coalition against the Death Penalty and the Australian government’s consultative group on the death penalty.
The Consultative Group noted her clear understanding of the mandate and its “challenges” - not least of which would be those posed by Iran as experienced by her predecessor. Javaid Rehman spoke openly of what he described as Iran’s “contemptuous” attitude to the Human Rights Council and his mandate. Iran’s representatives at the UN in Geneva could prove occasionally abusive and never less than disingenuous when dealing with him personally in the HRC chamber.
The accusations levelled against Rehman were essentially that he is a tool of Western powers with a political agenda and that the factual basis of the reports are untrue or designed to “obfuscate and distort realities” as Kazem Gharibabadi, head of the Iran Human Rights Council, described Rehman’s final; report to the HRC in March this year.
The UN mandate to examine Iran human rights came into effect in 1984 - the first Special Rapporteur Andres Aguilar resigned after two years because of the lack of cooperation from the Iranian authorities.
Things haven’t improved since then: the mandate has never been recognised by the Islamic Republic, which refuses entry into the country by the Special Rapporteur. But Iran has so far failed to get the mandate itself blocked, which it was able to do from 2002 until 2011 by exploiting the country voting system within the HRC which still frequently splits along geopolitical lines and for which voting patterns both for and against the Special Rapporteur’s reports on Iran are predictable.
It seems unlikely that this scenario will change with Dr Sato. The Islamic Republic could hardly be expected to reduce its hostility to either the mandate for independent investigation into its human rights record or the Special Rapporteur appointed by the UN.
Before even beginning to tackle those problems, Pezeshkian warned the interim government under vice president Mohammad Mokhber to avoid creating new problems by signing contracts with individuals and organizations and creating long-lasting financial commitments for the new government.
Before the letter was sent, news was going around that Raisi's legacy government has been hiring and firing individuals, and entering into long-term contracts with some public and private sector entities during the past week.
Meanwhile, Iranian media enumerated up to six problems the new government has inherited from President Ebrahim Raisi’s administration. A voluminous dossier about every one of those problems will be on Pezeshkian's desk once he officially takes office at the end of July.
Many of those problems are the outcome of sanctions as well as mismanagement and indecision by the previous government. A bigger problem for the new government is that the annual budget for the coming year has been already finalized and there is very little it can do to address a huge deficit and major spending decisions.
In fact, the first problem Pezeshkian will face is the budget deficit. The government still owes money to banks and other organizations for debts dating back to 2022 and even before. Since the United States imposed oil export sanctions in 2018, the government’s main source of revenue was badly affected.
The Raisi administration lacked financial discipline, according to Rouydad24, pro-Pezeshkian news website in Tehran. It spent more foreign currency in 2022 and 2023 than it earned.
Only the Ministry of Agriculture has spent more than $20 billion on importing essential commodities while it was allowed to spend $15 billion. A large part of this debt remains for the years to come. On the other hand, pharmaceutics and machinery importers have been facing big losses because of mismanagement of funds as well as losing the trust of their trade partners abroad. All of these debts and shortfalls need to be addressed by the Pezeshkian administration in 2024.
Businesses in Iran predict that the government will be in trouble paying for the import of essential commodities this year, particularly as China has not been introducing any discipline in repatriating several billion of dollars of Iran's oil money, according to Tehran media.
The second issue the new government has inherited is the challenge of adjusting pay for millions of retired government employees and military personnel. In recent years, not a day has passed in Iran without protest demonstrations by pensioners. Despite this ongoing unrest, no solution appears to be on the horizon.
The third problem is about Iran's ailing industrial infrastructure and its need for investment. Industries are short of financial resources and do not have any hope of attracting any capital. The government's solution has been printing money and expanding the monetary base, which exacerbates an already 50% annual inflation. This has eaten away at workers’ real incomes, leaving them deeply disgruntled and restless.
Aging public infrastructure is the fourth major issue. Iran lacks a sufficient transportation fleet, relying on up to 10,000 Afghan trucks to help transport goods. The shipping industry is nearly non-existent and fraught with problems, including a shortage of containers. Consequently, unloading cargo can take anywhere from 45 days to 6 months.
The fifth problem is the issue of taxes. Businesses are unhappy about rising taxes and the difficulties created by inefficient tax collection software. At the same time, the government has not been successful in dealing with tax evasion and this has made an additional burden for real taxpayers. The last issue mentioned by the press is inefficient and even harmful regulation inhibiting the healthy functioning of capital markets.
Despite these challenges, a group of economists and social scientists in Iran have expressed hope that Pezeshkian's administration presents one of the last peaceful opportunities for solving the country’s problems. These experts have their doubts about the country's future under Pezeshkian. They note that the presidential debates revealed that while two groups in Iran emphasize ideological and economic solutions for the nation's issues, neither assumes responsibility for the country's plight, despite both having been in power over the past 45 years.