under Article 7 of the ICCPR extends to “corporal punishment, including excessive chastisement ordered as punishment for a crime or as an educative or disciplinary measure”.21 The Iranian government passed a new law in 2020 that would allow for the granting of citizenship to children born of an Iranian mother and a foreign father.22 The law, aptly called “Granting Citizenship to Children Resulting from Marriage Between Iranian Women and NonIranian Men” was finally sent for implementation to the relevant agencies by the Vice-President of Iran, Es’haq Jahangiri, on June 3rd, 2020. Until this date, Article 976 of the Iranian Civil Code of 2015 mandated that only children born of Iranian fathers would be granted citizenship. The new law was introduced in 2015 in Parliament, yet it was sent back to this body of government twice for amendment before it was approved by the Guardian Council on October 2nd, 2019.23 Despite the apparent improvements brought about by this law, rights organisations have highlighted its myriad shortcomings, namely the fact that Iranian women are still required to apply for their children to be granted citizenship, whilst children of Iranian men are granted nationality by default.24 Furthermore, the law requires that applications submitted by women must still be approved by the Intelligence Ministry as well as the intelligence branch of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), who are in charge of deciding whether the case presents so-called ”security issues”, a provision that can be arbitrarily employed to deny such applications.25 Due to the fact that this new law has been put into circulation fairly recently, there aren’t any statistical figures to demonstrate its effectiveness.26 Regardless, it is expected to contribute to granting citizenship to around 500,000 children (mostly children of Afghan refugees and Iranian women) who had, until now, been deprived of a legal avenue for obtaining an Iranian birth certificate. The Islamic Republic of Iran has not brought its domestic laws and regulations into compliance with the Convention and has not ensured that the provisions of the Convention prevail whenever there is a conflict with the domestic law.27 Recommendation Status: This recommendation has NOT been implemented. 21 UN Human Rights Committee (HRC), CCPR General Comment No. 20: Article 7 (Prohibition of Torture, or Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment), 10 March 1992, available at 22 Radio Farda 23 ISNA 24 https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/10/03/reforms-will-grant-nationality-children-iranian-women 25 Ibid. 26 ISNA 27 For more, please see: Impact Iran submission to the Committee on the Rights of the Child, review of the 3rd and 4th periodic reports of the Islamic Republic of Iran 4