Iran must halt execution of Goli Kouhkan domestic violence survivor: UN experts
According to the Balochistan Human Rights Group, Mai Sato, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran, together with other UN human rights experts, has urged Iranian authorities to immediately halt the execution of Goli Kouhkan, a 25-year-old Baloch woman and survivor of domestic violence, scheduled for December 2025 (Dey 1404).
The statement explains that Kouhkan, who lacks official identity documents, was forced into marriage at the age of 12 and gave birth at 13. She endured years of physical and psychological abuse. In 2018, after her husband violently assaulted her and their five-year-old son, he was killed during an altercation.
Iranian courts have sentenced Goli Kouhkan to qisas (retribution). The victim’s family has agreed to pardon her only in exchange for 10 billion tomans, an amount impossible for a Baloch woman without identification documents—who has also been disowned by her family—to obtain.
Mai Sato stresses: “Goli Kouhkan is a survivor of domestic violence who has become a victim of the judicial system. Her execution would represent a profound injustice. If carried out, the state would be executing a woman who spent years suffering gender-based violence and acted in defense of herself and her child.”
According to UN experts, between 2010 and 2024 (1389–1403), at least 241 women were executed in Iran, many of them women who killed abusive husbands or partners, often in self-defense.
Sato concludes: “The case of Goli Kouhkan clearly illustrates how gender discrimination and ethnic marginalization intersect, producing devastating injustices.”
