Requirements of Legal Governance for the Islamic Republic of Iran in the Face of International Accusations of Systematic Violation of Women's Rights

Human rights accusations against the Islamic Republic of Iran, especially regarding women’s rights, have grown significantly in recent decades. This trend, after the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement in 2022 and its subsequent socio-political changes, led the Human Rights Council to establish a stricter monitoring mechanism—an independent international fact-finding mission—as a result of which accusations of women’s rights violations have been recharacterized as “systematic violation of women’s rights” and, beyond that, “crimes against humanity”. A significant part of this increased pressure and conceptual expansion stems from the inefficiency of Iran’s current accountability approach, which is rooted in the lack of a legal governance framework in this field. This study examines the requirements and pillars for realizing such a governance system against international accusations of systematic violation of women’s rights. Based on normative content and discourse analysis methods, findings show that three levels of legal governance, including the “legal system”, “executive and judicial structure”, and “accountability approach”, require fundamental transformation through, respectively, “designing an integrated women’s rights framework”, “creating clear executive standards and establishing a national human rights institution”, and “focusing on natural law interpretation, respect for cultural diversity, and diplomatic networking” in face of extra-discursive conflicts (Western vs. Islamic human rights) and intra-discursive conflicts (the gap between theory and practice in Iran’s legal system). These normative, institutional, and accountability transformations can strengthen Iran’s official diplomacy while reducing accusations and increasing the government’s international credibility. Finally, the study offers policymakers a three-level implementation roadmap with short-, medium-, and long-term practical recommendations.