Today marks the anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations General Assembly on 10 December 1948, a document that guarantees the fundamental civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights of every human being, regardless of the country to which they belong.
In Balochistan, however, these rights have been systematically violated for centuries by successive ruling governments.
In recent decades, the government of Iran has pursued deliberate state policies aimed at erasing the identity of the Baloch nation. The execution rate of Baloch people remains alarmingly high: in 2024 alone, at least 111 members of the Baloch nation were executed in Iranian prisons, despite the Baloch constituting only 2–6 % of Iran’s total population.
State violence takes the form of direct shootings by military and security forces at innocent citizens in public, the creation of collective trauma, the systematic eradication of linguistic, cultural and religious characteristics, imposed poverty, demographic and land engineering, the destruction of homes, and the nationalisation of the ancestral lands of the Baloch nation without fair compensation. These practices, pursued by both the Pahlavi government and the current government of Iran over the past century, constitute clear violations of international human rights law.
The peaceful and civic struggle of the Baloch nation to secure its rights, including the right to self-determination and national sovereignty, can be an effective path toward ending these crimes, discrimination and injustices.
We call upon the international community to listen to the voice of the Baloch nation and to take immediate action.
Balochistan Human Rights Group
10 December 2025
