Introduction:
Women’s rights activists in Iran have long advocated for the creation of legislation to address the issue of violence against women, and to provide avenues of redress against perpetrators of such violence, including when the violence takes place within the home. They hoped to see the creation of a comprehensive law that would encompass the myriad forms of violence to which women are girls are subjected, physical, emotional, economic and other. Unfortunately, this has not yet come to pass. This brief follows trajectory of violence against women legislation in Iran, from its first formal introduction to in__ to the present day. The report outlines the manner in which passage of the legislation has been stymied by a combination of procedural and bureaucratic hurdles, as well as deeper, more fundamental political differences over very issue of violence against women and how it should be addressed. While the various governmental entities that have at various points been charged with drafting, reviewing, and revising the bill have been embroiled in debates and finger pointing, women in Iran have been left without adequate protection.
First Appearance of the Bil:
On 22 June, 2011, Maryam Mojtahedzadeh, the Head of the Center for Women and Family Affairs of the Presidency announced that for the first time, a bill] titled “Women’s Security” had been approved. According to Maryam Mojtahedzadeh, the Cabinet had approved the bill, consisting of 12 articles, to address the legal security of women within the domestic sphere of the family, and additionally, to address any other legal gaps, a National Headquarters for Women and Family Affairs would be established.
Subsequent statements by Parvin Hedayati, Deputy for Social Capital at the Center for Women and Family Affairs and Zahra Elahian, a conservative member of the Islamic Consultative Assembly, provided additional details regarding the preparation and drafting of the bill, which had been prepared and drafted pursuant to Article 227 of the Fifth Development Plan Document. Under Article 227 of the Fifth Development Plan Document, the government was required to take legal action during the program years (2011-2015)to prepare and draft the “National Document on the Security of Women and Children in Social Relations” with the participation and planning of the Law Enforcement Force of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Judiciary, the State Welfare Organization, different municipalities, the Ministry of Interior, the Supreme Council of Provinces, the Center for Women and Family Affairs of the Presidency, and the Ministries of Health, Treatment and Medical Education, and Labor and Social Affairs.
The Strategic Supervision Deputy of the Presidency had designated the Iranian Security Forces , as a subsidiary of the Ministry of Interior, as responsible for preparing this document, and had considered the Center for Women and Family Affairs as the cooperating body for drafting this bill. In late April 2011, Parvin Hedayatiannounced that “the bill on ensuring women’s security within the family has been drafted in 88 articles and four chapters” and would be sent to the Government Bills Commission within one month. She later announced in June that the bill had been sent for expert review to specialists in the legislative, executive, and judicial branches.
Ultimately, after holding specialized workshops and getting input from various agencies dealing with women’s issues, after six rounds of edits and revisions, the final version of the “Bill on Ensuring Women’s Security,” was finalized, with five chapters and in 81 articles, and on December 8, 2011, it was submitted to the Cabinet for approval .
Although the text of the proposed bill was never made public, those involved in its drafting claimed that the bill was “unprecedented in the country’s legislation, because until then no other similar bill had been drafted specifically to support women who are victims of crime or exposed to violence.” In an interview she gave several years after serving as Vice President for Women and Family Affairs in Rouhani’s administration, Shahindokht Molaverdi said, “To be fair, it seemed to be a comprehensive bill, because it had been drafted with the participation of experts and had taken a set of measures into account.”
However,while being reviewed in the Government Bills Commission, some commission members stated that provisions within the bill that established punishments and penalties were of a legal nature, and based on the Guardian Council’s interpretations, bills with legal provisions required the consultation and participation of the Judiciary. For this reason, the bill was removed from the Cabinet’s agenda and it stalled in the Bills Commission during Ahmadinejad’s administration.
The Administration of the “Lawyer President”
In the 2013 election campaign, the promises and statements made by Hassan Rouhani regarding changing some discriminatory laws and practices against women – had they not remained mere promises – could have led to some improvement in the legal status of women. Perhaps it was these promises and his educational background in law, which earned him the title of “lawyer president” in some media outlets, and that led, after his electoral victory and the formation of the Eleventh Government, to the Women’s Security Bill being placed on the agenda and submitted for review to the first first session of the new administration’s Bills Commission in September 2013.
At that session, it was decided that a working group composed of representatives of the Judiciary, the Ministries of Cooperatives, Labor and Social Welfare, Interior, Justice, the Legal Affairs Office of the Presidency, and a representative of the State Welfare Organization would review the bill and, after obtaining expert opinions and compiling conclusions, submit it once again to the Government Bills Commission.
After considering input from the various agencies and repeated follow-ups with the Judiciary, it was decided that the parts of the bill containing legal provisions would be separated so that they could be addressed by the Judiciary in amendments to the Islamic Penal Code, and that the Vice Presidency for Women would address the social aspects of the bill. Ultimately, the Women’s Security Bill was submitted to the government in the winter of 2013, but after three review sessions in the Government Bills Commission, the decision was made to merge this bill with another one, the Social Security Document for Women and Children.
What Is the National Document on the Security of Women and Children in Social Relations?
Under Article 227 of the Fifth Development Plan Document, the government had been charged with drafting and implementing the National Document on the Security of Women and Children in Social Relations. However, Ahmadinejad’s administration had taken no steps to prepare this document, except for drafting the Women’s Security Bill, which itself could not serve as a substitute for this document. For this reason, after the Eleventh Government took office, drafting the National Document on the Security of Women and Children in Social Relations was once again placed on the government’s agenda.
Since no specific agency had been designated in this article as responsible for preparing the document, an inquiry to the Management and Planning Organization determined that the Ministry of Interior was responsible for this task, and ultimately this responsibility was assigned to the Office for Women’s Affairs of the Ministry of Interior. Drafting of the document began in April 2014, and a preliminary draft of this document, consisting of 204 pages, was prepared in the winter of that same year.
According to Molaverdi, the announcement, during a session of the Government Bills Commission for reviewing the Women’s Security Bill, that the draft of the National Document on the Security of Women and Children in Social Relations prepared by the Office for Women’s Affairs of the Ministry of Interior would soon be ready, most members of the commission stated that there was no need to have two documents dedicated to the issue of women’s security. Instead, it was suggested that there should be a single comprehensive law.
Since the Women’s Security Bill focused on domestic violence and violence within the family, and the Ministry of Interior’s document addressed violence in social relations, it was decided that after the final draft of the Ministry of Interior’s document was prepared, the two documents would be merged and integrated so that ultimately there would be only one document dedicated to the issue of ensuring women’s security. The second revision of the document, after incorporating the views of various agencies, was prepared in 382 pages and in July 2014 was sent to the Management and Planning Organization with the signature of the Minister of Interior.
However, after holding several sessions at the Management and Planning Organization, it became clear that it was not possible to merge the Women’s Security Bill against Violence with the Social Security Document for Women and Children. The task of following up and revising the Women’s Security Bill was assigned to the Vice Presidency for Women. It was also decided that the Social Security Document for Women and Children in Social Relations would be divided into two sections—women and children—and that the section related to children would be placed under the Secretariat of the National Reference for the Convention on the Rights of the Child, while the section related to women would be reorganized under the title “Document on the Security of Women in Social Relations.”
Ultimately, the final version of this document, titled “National Document on the Security of Women in Social Relations,” consisting of 430 pages, was prepared by the Office for Women and Family Affairs of the Ministry of Interior and submitted to the Management and Planning Organization in February 2015. After several months of uncertainty, it was finally sent to the Cabinet in November 2016. Although the implementation period of the Fourth Development Plan had been extended until the end of 2016, this document did not reach the stage of promulgation and implementation, and merely remained as a document in the government’s performance record
What Ultimately Happened to the Women’s Security Bill during Rouhani’s Administration?
After it became clear that it was not possible to merge and integrate the Women’s Security Bill against Violence with the Security Document for Women and Children in Social Relations, the Vice Presidency for Women once again resumed the work of reviewing and revising the bill. Three research teams worked on the bill, and approximately 500 pages of supporting documentation were prepared so that the bill would face less opposition during the review stage before the Parliament and ultimately be approved by the Guardian Council.
Once again, the Government Bills Commission expressed the opinion that sessions should be held with the Judiciary to preempt possible objections by the Guardian Council as to why a bill with legal provisions had not been submitted by the Judiciary. Due to the slow pace of reforming the Penal Law, Molaverdi, the Vice President for Women and Family Affairs, decided to include in the bill those provisions that the Judiciary had previously accepted, so that in the future it could become a more comprehensive law, and then the Bills Commission would correspond with the Judiciary for review of the bill.
The bill was sent to the Legal Affairs Office of the Judiciary in June 2017. Before the twelfth presidential elections, Hassan Rouhani, while campaigning, explicitly referred to the approval of the comprehensive bill on ensuring women’s security against violence and the operationalization of the National Document on the Security of Women and Children in Social Relations (in accordance with Article 54 of the Citizens’ Rights Charter), as part of his administration’s future programs in the event of electoral success. However, after the Twelfth Government was formed, Molaverdi, who during his first administration had been subjected to various insults and character assassination due to her persistent pursuit of women’s rights issues, was removed from that post and placed in a lower, ceremonial position as Special Assistant to the President for Citizens’ Rights. Masoumeh Ebtekar, who replaced Molaverdi, promised from the outset that the bill would be seriously pursued.
However, the review of the bill in the Legal Affairs Office of the Judiciary did not proceed as anticipated. In September 2017, Zabiollah Khodaeian, Deputy for Legal Affairs of the Judiciary, while expressing satisfaction with the review process of the Bill on Ensuring Women’s Security against Violence, stated that the text of the bill was being reviewed in regular, special sessions held within the Judiciary and attended by representatives of the Legal Affairs Office of the Presidency, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Justice, the Supreme Court, the Prosecutor’s Office, and university professors. However, he added that some 40 provisions of the bill – which provide for prison sentences – conflict with the general policies of the system in legal and judicial matters, which emphasize prison reduction and the necessity of considering alternatives to imprisonment.
Statements made by Khodaeian during a 3-day review period of the bill (held from November 1-3 2017) demonstrated his dissatisfaction at the very criminalization of violence against women, and with the way in which it reduced men’s control over women within the family. For example, one of his criticisms stemming from the bill’s vagueness, was that for some of the crimes enumerated in the bill, no specific, definite, and limited definition had been provided. For instance, the bill stated that “placing a woman under surveillance is a crime,” and since the act of “placing under surveillance” had not been defined or limited, this could undermine the security of family members and the preservation and protection of the family. He added having such a wide range of behaviors criminalized was unprecedented in the Iranian legal system. Of course, the Judiciary was not the only critic and opponent of this bill. Two months later, in a piece on the bill published in Kayhan newspaper, Zahra Ayatollahi, head of the Women’s Cultural and Social Council, expressed concern over the approval of this bill and wrote that it “threatens families and frightens men lest any of their behavior and actions be construed as an instance of violence against women”; that “if claiming rights becomes formalized in this model, soon a comprehensive bill on ensuring men’s security against violence, a bill on ensuring family security against violence, and so on will be placed in the queue of bills.” She added that “the best type of support for women, as Islam has guided, is that support for women be entrusted to the men of the family—father, husband, brother, grandfather, father-in-law, and so on,”; and that “this Western-style support for women will bring about a result similar to the West. Currently in England forty percent of violence is reported against men. Of course, the real volume of violence by women against men is greater than this.”
Despite these oppositions—only a portion of which reached the media and public commentary—by February 2018, review of the Bill on Ensuring Women’s Security against Violence in the Legal Affairs Office of the Judiciary was completed, and it was sent to the Head of the Judiciary for final approval.
Until late autumn of that year, despite follow-ups by the Vice Presidency for Women and by some female members of Parliament, there was no news regarding final approval of the bill by the Head of the Judiciary. Only from statements by the Director General for Drafting Bills of the Judiciary was it revealed that more than 40 articles of this 92-article bill had been removed during the review process. Of course, statements made several months earlier by the head of the Women and Family Cultural and Social Council also indicated that this council had played a role in removing and changing some provisions of the bill. Zahra Ayatollahi had said that the council had provided its concrete proposals to the Judiciary, and that nearly all of their proposals—including providing non-custodial punishments for perpetrators of violence—had been implemented. However, after reviewing the amended bill, they had again raised points for change in the revised version .
In fact, statements made in January 2018 by Mohsen Eje’i, Judiciary spokesperson, made clear that the problem with this bill went beyond the articles removed by the Judiciary’s Legal Affairs Office, and that in the weekly review sessions that had begun that month, some individuals had even suggested that the bill was not reformable, and that perhaps another bill either drafted by the Judiciary itself or by the government should be pursued. According to Ejei’s statements, some of the objections to the bill included the definition of violence, the use of terms and phrases such as violence and psychological harassment, and the heavy prison sentences proposed. For this reason, once again the Legal Affairs Office was asked to research and examine whether the bill was truly reformable or not.
The Legal Affairs Office of the Judiciary and several members of the Council of Senior Judiciary Officials undertook the task of revising these matters so that the bill would be drafted in such a way so as to “not harm the stability of the family,” because they believed that bringing family matters into the purview of the judicial system —except in cases of exceptional necessity—was certainly not in the interest of families.
Since the process of reviewing and final approval of the bill within the judiciary had become very lengthy, in February, , the Speaker of Parliament, in a meeting with members of the Women’s Caucus, suggested that perhaps it would be better to not wait for the bill’s approval, and that the Women’s Caucus should submit a parliamentary proposal so that the time remaining in this parliamentary session could be used and the parliamentary proposal could be approved.
Meanwhile, the Head of the Judiciary also changed, and Ebrahim Raisi was appointed to this position. It was once again decided that the same working group that had been formed by the former Head of the Judiciary would work on the issue of punishments and instances of violence. Also, by order of the Head of the Judiciary, a national consultative session was held to review the Bill on Ensuring Women’s Security against Violence so that representatives of provincial justice departments, universities, the Welfare Organization, representatives of provincial women and family offices, and female judges across the country could discuss and exchange views regarding the bill.
And finally, on September 16, 2019, more than 800 days the bill had been first sent by the government to the Judiciary, it was submitted once again by the Judiciary, this time under the title “Bill on Protection, Dignity, and Ensuring the Security of Women against Violence,” consisting of five chapters and 77 articles, and its text was made available to the public.
And now once again it was the government’s turn to make changes to the bill. As Ashraf Gerami-Zadegan, legal advisor to the Vice President for Women and Family Affairs, stated in September of that same year, after the bill was sent to the Cabinet it was decided that the bill would return to the Government Bills Commission and be reviewed and amended again, because the content had to be compatible with the original title of the bill and dozens of other corrections needed to be made in sections that limited women’s rights.
Ultimately, after obtaining expert opinions from various executive agencies and after multiple reviews in 15 sessions of the subcommittee and 17 sessions of the main Government Bills Commission, on January 2021, the bill was approved by the Council of Ministers with priority o status and was sent to the Islamic Consultative Assembly. Contrary to usual legislative procedures, Parliament delayed for about five months in formally receiving the bill, until finally on May 29, 2021,it formally announced its receipt and, with the approval of priority status, referred the bill to the Legal and Judicial Commission of Parliament for legal review.
Instead of Reviewing the Bill, Parliament Submitted Its Own Proposal!
While the Women’s Security Bill that the government was not yet formally received in the parliament, some parliamentarians submitted a proposal titled “Protection, Dignity, and Ensuring the Security of Women against Violence” into the parliamentary system for review. In February 2021, Member of Parliament Fatemeh Qasem-Pour, head of the Women and Family Caucus, of Parliament, stated: “This proposal carries equal weight to the Bill on Preserving Dignity and Supporting Women against Violence, for the Parliament.” Regarding the fate of the Bill on Protection, Dignity, and Ensuring the Security of Women against Violence, she said: “This bill is important to the Parliament and it will take serious action regarding it; the Parliament is debating whether to begin work on it through a joint commission or a special commission.”
Qasem -Pour also blamed what she described as the extreme approach of Rouhani’s administration towards the issue of violence against women for the eight-year delay in sending the bill: “When policymakers’ adopt so wide a scope on the issue of violence against women, that it requires the creation of a national authority on violence, we end up with an eight-year delay in sending the bill.”
The Fate of the Bill in Raisi’s Administration
With the election of Ebrahim Raisi, Ensieh Khazali assumed the leadership of the Vice Presidency for Women and Family Affairs. In her first press conference, in response to a question about the fate of the bill, she attributed all delays to the previous administration and thanked the Judiciary—whose former head had now become President—for quickly approving the bill, and she requested that Parliament review it more quickly.
The bill was put under review in the relevant parliamentary commissions, and as the spokesperson of the Women’s Caucus announced in September 2021, during the session reviewing the bill in the Women’s Commission—which was held with the presence of experts from the Parliamentary Research Center, the Judiciary, and the Islamic Research Center of Qom—the strengths and weaknesses of the bill, its predominant approach, its degree of conformity with relevant documents, choice of terminology, and other issues were examined by experts, and it was decided that a joint commission would be formed to resolve the formal and substantive challenges of the bill, so that it could be presented to the open session of Parliament with minimal problems and challenges.
In the years during which this bill was circulating among the three different decision-making branches, cases of femicide and extreme violence that would reach the media repeatedly prompted official statements about the fate of the bill back to the headlines, and of course each branch, depending on which body was currently reviewing it, blamed the other as responsible for the uncertainty and delay. The horrific murder of Mona, the seventeen-year-old girl from Ahvaz, who, on February 5, 2022, was beheaded by her husband, and whose severed head was paraded in the streets of the city, prompted female members of Parliament and also the Parliamentary Research Center to comment. Rahmani, a member of the board of the Women’s Caucus, promised that the bill would be raised in the open session of Parliament the following year, because at the end of the year, the Parliament was occupied with reviewing the budget bill.
With the announcement of the bill’s status by the head of the Parliamentary Research Center, it became clear that this Center was simultaneously reviewing both the bill and the later proposal submitted by Parliament. In February 2022, Babak Negahdari announced that the proposal titled “Protection, Dignity, and Ensuring the Security of Women against Violence” had been sent to the Parliamentary Research Center in winter 2021 and the bill titled “Preserving Dignity and Supporting Women against Violence” had been sent the following spring , and that the Parliamentary Research Center, as the expert arm of the Islamic Consultative Assembly, had placed the review of these texts on its agenda starting in April 2021. He added that a working group composed of the Legal Studies Office, Cultural Studies Office, and Education and Social Studies Office had been formed, and had held numerous sessions with executive agencies, the Judiciary, and activists in the field of women and family matters, and had reviewed the core issues and evaluated the articles of the bill. This working group was tasked with comparing athe articles of the proposal and the bill, considering the current situation of domestic violence in Iran, examining the requirements for approval and review of the bill and its monitoring governance structure, and ultimately presenting a revised draft.
The Social Commission of Parliament had prioritized changing the bill’s approach from a punitive one to a more restorative framework that would strengthen the institution of the family. In fact, in order to ensure that the defined interventions in the bill would not be insufficient, harmful, or detrimental to the family institution, given the different socio-cultural contexts across different provinces, in June 2022, a webinar with judges from across the country was held to seek their input and supplementary opinions.
Finally, on December 12, 2022, the Parliament’s Social Commission approved the bill – two years after it had been submitted. In February 2023, it was made public by the head of the Women and Family Caucus under the title “Bill on the Prevention of Harm to Women and the Promotion of Their Security against Misconduct.” With its publication, women’s rights activists and others who had been awaiting this bill for over a decade were disappointed and disillusioned. The word “violence” had been removed from the title of the bill, and the definition of violence against women and its various classifications were removed from its text, and the approach of the bill shifted from criminalizing violence and punishing perpetrators toward strengthening the foundation of the family at the cost of ignoring violence against women and simply interpreting it as misconduct.
The only positive aspect of this bill compared to the previous one was that, under its first article, “all women who are present or residing within the territorial domain of the Islamic Republic of Iran, regardless of ethnicity, religion, sect, and other individual and social characteristics,” would benefit from the protection of this law. Of course, it was the Human Rights Headquarters of the Islamic Republic that had proposed adding this article to the bill. In January 2023, its secretary, Kazem Gharibabadi, secretary of this headquarters, in Dey 1401, cited among the proposals the Human Rights Headquarters had presented to the Social Commission and the Board of the Islamic Consultative Assembly; among them, the need to clarify and comprehensively define categories of violence, the necessity of criminalizing and designating punishments for crimes such as assault, harassment, and sexual harassment, the establishment of specialized branches for handling violence cases, and the extension of the bill’s protections to all women who reside in Iran, and to Iranian women residing outside Iran.
In a later interview, Fatemeh Qasem-Pour, head of the Women’s Caucus of the Islamic Consultative Assembly, explained that they had amended the bill in order to strengthen the foundation of the family, by replacing its punitive approach with a framework for restorative justice and problem-solving, so that women and men experience security and tranquility within the family environment.
Finally, the bill’s general provisions —which had been given priority status in May 2021—were approved on April 9, 2023, with 190 votes in favor, 45 votes against, and 9 abstentions. It was also referred to the Social Commission to review certain articles. It was decided that review of these articles would take place with the participation of the Education, Legal, Cultural, and Health Commissions. Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, Speaker of the Islamic Consultative Assembly, in the first session reviewing this bill, which was held the following week with the presence of members of the Social Commission and representatives of the Health and Treatment, Cultural, Education and Research, and Judicial and Legal Commissions and officials of the relevant bodies and the Vice Presidency for Women and Family Affairs, stated that this bill was one of the serious demands of the Supreme Leader that had been finally realized after three decades. He connected support for women to their role in the family, stating, “Women are the pillar of the family,” and said that he considered this bill consistent with strengthening the family.
In August, Ensieh Khazali, Vice President for Women and Family Affairs, announced that the bill had completed its stages in the commissions and was currently in line for the open session of Parliament. She stated that “thank God, violence is not widespread among our families, and perhaps the most important security that women should enjoy is peace of mind at home.” She explained that “this bill has more of an educational, preventive, skills-building, and family-preserving aspect, and its emphasis is on preserving the position of women within the family.”
Promises regarding the approval and fate of the bill were even made in the electoral campaigns of candidates for the Twelfth Parliament. Ghalibaf, Speaker of the Eleventh Parliament, who was a candidate for the new elections in March 2024, made eight electoral promises to the people, one of which was approval of this bill. He said: “With this resolution, each instance of mistreatment against women will be criminalized; we will operationalize this progressive law and defend the dignity and status of women.”
And finally, starting on April 28, 2024, Parliament once again began reviewing details of the bill on promoting women’s security.
The Fate of the Bill in Pezeshkian’s Administration
With the death of Ebrahim Raisi following a helicopter crash and the holding of new elections, once again led some of the candidates to make statements and new promises regarding the women’s security bill during their electoral campaigns. Among them, Qalibaf, who had been a candidate multiple times in previous elections, stated that to prevent injustice to women within the family or in other environments, the bill would come under consideration of the new administration. Additionally, during a debate broadcast on national television, Pezeshkian criticized the delays in passing the bill, stating, “we have not yet been able to resolve the issue of violence against women and address their place within society.
Once Pezeshkian assumed the presidency, on August 10, 2024, Zahra Behroozazar replaced Ensieh Khazali as head of Women and Family Affairs, and placed the bill among the first ten action items in her department’s agenda. On November 9, 2024, the murder of journalist Mansoureh Ghadiri Javid, at the hands of her husband, once again brought the bill to the forefront of everyone’s attention. Behroozazar said that from the first day of the Pezeshkian administration, this bill has been on the agenda and that Parliament has been requested to attend to it; she once again asked Parliament to turn their attention to the bill. However, at this time, Fatemeh Mohammad Beigi, who had taken leadership of the Women’s Caucus in June 2024, stated that she believed the bill was in need of reform and that it is not consistent with women’s rights within Iranian and Islamic society.
Review of the bill began again in April 2024 in the Islamic Consultative Assembly, and for a short period, the Women’s Caucus also took part in the review process. However, in May 2024, the bill was withdrawn from the parliament Behrouzazar explained this by saying there had been “fundamental changes in the spirit of the bill.” She elaborated that the bill, which following years of advocacy, had initially been drafted with the title “Support for Women Against Violence,” had been renamed “Preserving Dignity and Supporting Women and the Family” after going through parliamentary review, which, she said is a sign that has moved away from its original goal.
Behrouzazar emphasized that the government is focused on reducing violence and other adverse familial dynamics that may threaten the security of women and girls, and added: “The text proposed by the parliament and added to the government’s bill has completely changed the bill; as a result, the bill has changed in terms of identity and substance and is not at all compatible with the text that was originally submitted, and its capacity for preventing violence against women has been diminished.”
Eventually, the government formally requested withdrawal of the bill from Parliament for further review and amendment, which was met with mixed reactions. Some Parliament members criticized the move, considering it a cause of further delay in addressing violence against women. Others welcomed it, arguing that the bill in its current form was incomplete and vague and required fundamental reconsideration.
The withdrawal of the bill once again broughtthe legislative process to its starting point and raised questions about more than a decade of drafting, revision, removal, amendment, renaming, and reconsideration of a law that had originally been presented under the title “Ensuring Women’s Security against Violence.”
Comparing the Three Main Versions of the Bill
Over the course of more than a decade, three principal versions of the bill were produced:
- The initial government draft under the title “Ensuring Women’s Security against Violence.”
- The version revised by the Judiciary under the title “Protection, Dignity, and Ensuring the Security of Women against Violence.”
- The parliamentary version under the title “Prevention of Harm to Women and Promotion of Their Security against Misconduct.”
In the first draft, violence against women was explicitly defined and categorized. Various forms of physical, psychological, sexual, economic, and cyber violence were enumerated. Specific criminal sanctions were provided for each category, and the bill included provisions for the establishment of specialized judicial branches, the issuance of protective orders, emergency intervention mechanisms, and coordinated responsibilities among executive agencies.
In the second version revised by the Judiciary, the number of criminal provisions was reduced. Several prison sentences were replaced with alternative punishments. Certain definitions were narrowed or removed, and emphasis was placed on ensuring that the bill would not “harm the stabilityof the family.” The structure of the bill was reorganized into five chapters comprising 77 articles.
In the thirdversion, the term “violence” was removed from the title and largely from the text. The definition section was either eliminated or substantially altered. The approach shifted from explicit criminalization toward prevention, education, mediation, and restoration. Greater emphasis was placed on strengthening family cohesion and promoting moral and cultural measures. Many of the previously specified criminal sanctions were reduced, modified, or omitted.
Criminal Provisions in the Initial Draft
In the initial government draft, numerous acts were explicitly criminalized, including:
- Physical assault against women in domestic and non-domestic contexts.
- Psychological harassment, including threats, humiliation, coercion, and intimidation.
- Economic deprivation, including intentional denial of financial support or control of property for the purpose of domination.
- Sexual harassment and assault, including unwanted sexual conduct, coercion, or exploitation.
- Forced marriage and prevention of a woman’s lawful access to education, employment, or social participation.
- Cyber harassment, including dissemination of private images or information without consent.
- Surveillance and tracking intended to intimidate or control.
For many of these offenses, the draft specified graded punishments depending on severity, repetition, and resulting harm. In some instances, protective measures such as restraining orders, temporary removal of the perpetrator from the shared residence, and mandatory counseling were provided in addition to criminal penalties.
Removal and Modification of Criminal Articles
During review by the Judiciary, more than forty articles were reportedly removed or substantially modified. Objections centered on:
- The breadth of the definition of violence.
- The number of prison sentences.
- Concerns regarding excessive criminalization.
- The potential for misuse within family disputes.
- Alleged inconsistency with general penal policies aimed at reducing incarceration.
In the third version, further reductions were made to punitive provisions. In place of imprisonment in many cases, alternative measures such as educational courses, counseling, mediation, and social services were emphasized. The logic presented by supporters of these changes was that judicialization of family matters should occur only in necessary cases and that restorative justice mechanisms were preferable to punitive responses.
Analytical Observations
The legislative trajectory of the Women’s Security Bill illustrates tensions between competing approaches:
- A rights-based and criminal justice approach focused on defining and punishing violence.
- A family-centered approach prioritizing cohesion and mediation.
- An institutional approach concerned with compatibility with existing penal policies.
- A political approach shaped by shifts in government and parliamentary composition.
More than a decade after its initial drafting, the bill has undergone repeated transformations in name, content, structure, and philosophy. The removal of the term “violence” from its title symbolizes a broader shift in orientation. Whether the final outcome will meaningfully address the realities of violence against women or primarily reinforce existing family-centered frameworks remains a matter of ongoing debate.
Part Four: Recommendations
To the policymakers and decision-makers of the Islamic Republic of Iran:
- We ask the Vice Presidency for Women of Pezeshkian’s government, instead of pursuing the approval of the bill in the Islamic Consultative Assembly, to call for the suspension of the approval of this bill, and instead to take action for the approval of a comprehensive and genuine bill to support women against violence.
- We ask the Vice Presidency for Women of Pezeshkian’s government to place the amendment of laws that facilitate violence on their agenda through various bills.
- We ask the State Welfare Organization to act, in cooperation with the Vice Presidency for Women, toward facilitating the establishment and administration of safe houses for women subjected to violence by informed and committed women’s groups.
- We ask the Ministry of Interior, instead of restricting and preventing the activities of women’s civil groups, to facilitate the obtaining of permits for the official and public activities of women’s civil groups in order to provide services to women subjected to violence and to conduct public awareness-raising to reduce violence.
- We ask the representatives of the Islamic Consultative Assembly, especially the female representatives of the Legal and Judicial Commission, by accepting their responsibility in imposing suffering and violence on women through supporting discriminatory laws, to take a step toward compensating for harm and restoring the dignity and honor of women by approving progressive laws.
To the United Nations and the United Nations representations in Iran:
- We ask the United Nations to call for the ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women by the Islamic Republic of Iran and the five remaining countries.
- We ask the United Nations Special Rapporteur on violence against women, and the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran, by taking a position regarding the increase in femicide statistics due to violence-facilitating laws in the civil laws of the Islamic Republic, to call on the Iranian authorities to take steps toward changing these laws and approving comprehensive laws to protect women against various forms of violence.
- We ask the representation of the World Health Organization in Iran to encourage the authorities of the Islamic Republic to approve protective laws for women against violence by documenting the effects of legal violence on women’s physical and mental health.
- We ask the representation of UNICEF in Iran, by documenting the negative effects of child marriage on the prevalence of domestic violence, to encourage decision-making authorities to change the laws and increase the legal age of marriage.
- We ask the representation of the International Labour Organization in Iran to encourage the authorities of the Islamic Republic to legislate in order to reduce economic violence against women as well as workplace harassment, and to allocate budgets to increase women’s participation and economic empowerment.