When I first joined Human Rights Watch as the Iran researcher in 2010, I wanted nothing more than to conduct human rights investigations inside Iran, and engage with civil society and government officials to help improve the rights situation in the country. But I took the job knowing the Iranian government has long prevented Human Rights Watch and other international human rights organizations from openly conducting research inside the country, and that opportunities for real engagement may be far and few between.
Last week, however, I found myself in Kabul, Afghanistan, hosting a press conference with colleagues to release a report on Iran’s violations of the rights of as many as three million Afghan refugees and migrants living and working in the country, including denying them access to a fair and transparent asylum system. It was an exciting day of many firsts: my first Persian-language presentation at a news conference to an overwhelmingly Dari-speaking audience (Dari, one of Afghanistan’s official languages, is mutually intelligible with Persian). The first time a reporter from Iran’s state news agency attended a news conference I gave. The first time I took a question from such a reporter. My first television interviews, in Persian, on one of Afghanistan’s most popular networks, including a heated and challenging 45-minute back-and-forth with a host who seemed intent on discrediting our findings.
And the first report I’ve worked on that caused an Iranian official to chastise us on the phone for preparing what he thought was an unfair and inaccurate report.
Last month, during the first official meeting between Human Rights Watch and representatives of the Iranian government in years, a diplomat made his case that the international community had a grossly distorted image of the rights situation in Iran. He then acknowledged that Tehran was partly responsible because it had closed its doors to groups like Human Rights Watch. I can only hope that President Hassan Rouhani’s new administration takes these words to heart, because there is no substitute for real engagement between human rights groups and governments.
And because as great as it was to get close to Iran in Kabul, I’d much prefer debating Iran’s rights record… in Tehran.
