New UN rights rapporteur for Iran is a highly regarded expert

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.