Understanding Femicide and Legal Neglect in Iran: Does the System Let Women Down?

Author: Forouzan Hosseini Moghaddam, MA

March 24, 2026

Content Warning: Before you continue reading, please be aware that this report discusses femicide, child marriage, and gender-based violence, which may be distressing.

Illustration by Louiza Karageorgiou. © 2023 Louiza Karageorgiou. All rights reserved.

Background

The 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran marked a major shift in the country’s legal system, particularly regarding women’s rights. One of the most significant changes occurred in family law: the Family Protection Laws of 1967 and 1975, which were among the most progressive family law frameworks in the Middle East at the time, were repealed shortly after the revolution. These laws had expanded women’s rights in marriage, divorce, and child custody; under these laws, secular reforms granted women court approval for polygamy (requiring spousal consent and financial proof), a minimum marriage age of 18 (or 15 with court consent), equal divorce petition rights, maternal preference for young children in custody, flexible inheritance shares, and equal weight for testimony.

Their repeal occurred rapidly after the revolution, driven by the new government's ideological commitment to restoring Islamic jurisprudence over secular reforms, directly leading to the establishment of courts based on religious jurisprudence that significantly reduced women’s legal protections. Clerics like Ayatollah Khomeini, who had long opposed the Family Protection Laws for stripping their authority over family matters by shifting jurisdiction from traditional religious courts to secular ones, annulled the laws to reimpose extreme religious rules and frame the changes as purification from Western influence.

Although Iranian women’s acts of resistance began in the early days following the Revolution (Picture 1) and have continued ever since, their defiance achieved limited success in changing the legal framework. The consequences of this legal system have been severe for women, ranging from mandatory public dress codes to more serious violations of human rights. For example, reports by the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran (2024) and documentation by Amnesty International (2010) describe patterns of arbitrary arrest targeting women and girls, particularly in the context of protests such as the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement in 2022. Many detainees were held without due process, denied access to lawyers or family members, and subjected to coercive interrogations. According to Amnesty International’s findings, detainees were often exposed to sexual and gender-based violence as a means of punishment, intimidation, humiliation, or extraction of forced confessions. Reported abuses include gang rape, rape with objects, threats of sexual assault, forced nudity, and invasive body searches, alongside beatings, flogging, and electric shocks. Testimonies collected by the Fact-Finding Mission indicate that security forces explicitly framed sexual violence against women protesters as retribution for their public defiance, reportedly telling them that this was the “freedom they wanted.” Such acts constitute torture under international law, specifically the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT, 1984), which in Article 1 defines torture as any intentional act inflicting severe physical or mental pain or suffering by a public official for purposes like punishment, intimidation, confession extraction, or discrimination, and in Article 2 mandates an absolute prohibition with no exceptions for war, emergencies, superior orders, or public necessity. 

An Iranian woman arguing with a man on the streets of Tehran. The photograph was taken on 8 March 1979, International Women’s Day. On this day, more than 100,000 women took to the streets to protest the newly announced laws of Ayatollah Khomeini, including the decision to make the hijab mandatory for women in the workplace and public life. [Image credit: Hengameh Golestan / The British Museum Collection]

This systemic violence and legal inequalities—like restricted divorce access, paternal custody dominance, and devalued women's testimony—have contributed to ongoing forms of state and legal neglect, creating conditions in which violence against women, including femicide, is inadequately prevented or addressed.

The present article provides an in-depth analysis of two femicide cases in Iran, examining the victims’ background, the circumstances of the murders, and the legal response. Rather than relying solely on statistical evidence, it centers individual cases to show how structural legal inequalities and institutional failures shape women’s vulnerability to lethal violence. This approach allows for the identification of context-specific risk factors and exposes forms of systematic neglect surrounding femicide.

Femicide, Its Patterns, and Prevalence

The United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women) defines femicide as “the intentional killing with a gender-related motivation, distinguishing it from general homicide, where the motivation may not be related to gender. Femicide is driven by discrimination against women and girls, unequal power relations, gender stereotypes, or harmful social norms, and is described as the most extreme and brutal manifestation of violence against women and girls.”

Femicide is a growing crime in Iran. In the first half of 2023, 55 incidents were reported, rising to 93 in the first half of 2024. In 2024 overall, at least 179 cases of femicide were documented (Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights [OHCHR], 2025), and a minimum of 176 cases were recorded by the Hengaw Organization for Human Rights in 2025. Husbands and ex-husbands accounted for the majority of perpetrators (52 cases), followed by fathers, brothers, other male relatives, and boyfriends (Stop Femicide Iran, 2024). Many of these killings were honor-related, while others involved women murdered for exercising independent marital choices, such as initiating divorce or rejecting marriage proposals. Most victims were reportedly under 30 years of age, and in six cases, children witnessed the killings (Stop Honour Killings Campaign, 2023).

The impact of femicide is not evenly distributed across the country; rather, it appears to be shaped by intersecting forms of discrimination, with women from ethnic minority communities facing significantly elevated risks of lethal gender-based violence. For instance, between 2020 and 2024, Kurdish women were disproportionately affected, with 109 femicide cases documented by the Kurdistan Human Rights Network, reflecting national trends in motives, methods, and victim–perpetrator relationships (Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, 2025).

A person holding a red poster in Persian that says stop femicide at home and in the street, referring to both domestic violence and state violence. Behind her, the same message is written on the wall. The photo was likely taken during the 2022 protests in Iran. [Image credit: Anonymous / Radio Zamaneh]

Legal Failure as a Driver of Femicide

It is important to consider that the true extent of femicide is likely underreported, not only in general due to social stigma, family cover-ups, and distrust of authorities, but especially in cases involving sexual orientation or gender identity, primarily because Iran criminalizes homosexuality and transgender expression under Sharia-based laws, deterring families, victims' associates, and officials from disclosure to avoid stigma, further prosecution, or honor reprisals. For instance, in January 2024, a 17-year-old transgender individual was killed by their father in Tabriz for wearing makeup and engaging in same-sex relationships. The father received a three-year prison sentence, the minimum possible under Iranian law for a parent killing their child (6Rang, 2024; HRANA, 2024; Rokna, 2024).

The Islamic Penal Code of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Iran's primary governing criminal statute rooted in Shia interpretations of Sharia, in Chapter Three: General Requisites for Talion provides several exemptions for male perpetrators of femicide. Honour-related killings are typically treated as premeditated murder subject to qisas (retribution, often death), except under certain articles. Article 301 exempts fathers and paternal grandfathers from qisas for killing their children or grandchildren, though they may be required to pay diya (financial compensation, blood money) to the victim’s heirs. Article 630 exempts husbands from punishment for killing wives suspected of adultery under specific conditions, and Article 302 exempts perpetrators from qisas if the victim allegedly committed a hadd offence (a serious crime under Islamic law). In such circumstances, Article 612 allows judges to instead impose prison sentences ranging from three to ten years (Kelly, 1988; Stark, 2007).

This legal framework creates a dangerous hierarchy of violence, legitimizing honor-based killings and perpetuating gender-based disparities in punishment. Structural and cultural factors further sustain femicide, including economic dependence, lack of support services, and social norms that endorse male dominance.

Graffiti in the capital city of Tehran condemning violence against women in Iran. The slogan reads: “Femicide by the decree of God, State, Father.” It is a form of political protest that criticizes how religious interpretations, state laws, and patriarchal family structures are used to justify femicide and honor killings. [Image credit: Anonymous / Avatoday]

The Case of Mona Heydari

On February 5, 2022, a 17-year-old girl named Mona Heydari (also known as Ghazal) was murdered by her husband in Ahvaz, Iran. Mona was an ethnic Arab girl who had been forced into child marriage at the age of 12. Her husband was her first cousin. Her murder shocked the public after a graphic video spread online. The video showed the perpetrator, Sajjad Heydari, walking through a public square while smiling and holding Mona’s severed head. The footage led to widespread national and international outrage (Center for Human Rights in Iran [CHRI], 2022).

Mona had fled to Turkey months prior to the incident, seeking a life outside the constraints of her marriage. However, after being tracked down by her father and husband, she was convinced to return to Iran under deceptive assurances of safety (CHRI, 2022).

Following persistent demands for justice by human rights activists, lawyers, and journalists, Mona’s husband was sentenced to seven and a half years of discretionary imprisonment. Additionally, the victim’s brother-in-law was sentenced to 45 months of discretionary imprisonment for aiding and abetting the intentional murder.

Ladan Rahbari, a political sociologist at the University of Amsterdam, (2023) uses this case to examine two key concepts within Iran’s legal and social framework. The first is gheirat (honor), a traditional notion that emphasizes men’s responsibility to protect female family members and family honor. She notes that some high-ranking officials and clerics partially justified the killing by claiming that the perpetrator’s sense of gheirat was provoked by the victim’s attempt to escape and her activity on social media. 

The second concept is “legal himpathy.” A term originally coined by Kate Manne (2017), Rahbari (2023) expands on the concept of himpathy as the institutionalized tendency to extend disproportionate sympathy toward male perpetrators. Rahbari argues that the Iranian legal system reinforces this bias by framing femicide as “honor killings”. This legal framing shifts attention away from the victim’s right to life and instead centers on the emotional state and perceived justification of the perpetrator.

The murder of Mona Heydari is a state-facilitated crime. Her case clearly shows how child marriage, domestic violence, and state laws converge to create an environment where femicide is not only possible but, in some eyes, justified.

The Case of Romina Ashrafi

In May 2020, a 14-year-old girl named Romina Ashrafi was murdered by her father, Reza Ashrafi, in Talesh, Iran. Romina had attempted to run away with her boyfriend, a 28-year-old man, after her father refused to give them permission to marry. After being detained by the police, Romina reportedly pleaded with the authorities not to send her home, fearing her father’s violent temper. Despite her warnings, a judge ordered her return to her family’s custody (Guardian, 2020). Shortly after her return, her father decapitated her with a sickle while she was sleeping. The murder gained international attention, sparked a massive outcry across Iran, and highlighted the lack of legal protection for minors and the prevalence of domestic violence (BBC, 2020).

Romina’s death brought intense scrutiny to Iran’s Islamic Penal Code. Under current laws, a father or paternal grandfather who kills his child or grandchild is not subject to the principle of qisas or the death penalty. Instead, they typically face a maximum of only three to ten years in prison. This legal structure effectively grants male guardians a degree of impunity, as the state views them as the owners of their children’s lives rather than perpetrators of a capital crime (Parsa, 2021).

In response to Romina’s death, Iran passed a national law in June 2020 aimed at protecting children and adolescents, sometimes called the “Romina Law.” The law allows authorities to relocate children whose safety is at serious risk from a parent, but not from a spouse if the child is married (Al Jazeera, 2020). However, it does not address child marriage, and the male-dominated judicial system continues to disadvantage girls by prioritizing paternal or spousal authority, often dismissing pleas for protection or divorce on cultural/religious grounds like family honor. Support services such as hotlines, intervention centres, and safe houses exist but are limited and often inaccessible. Many girls cannot access these services freely because Iranian law often requires them to obtain permission from a male guardian to leave the home or seek help, which can prevent them from escaping abusive situations. Government-backed policies, such as marriage loans and incentives for young couples, have further encouraged child marriage by lowering financial barriers, and police rarely intervene in domestic violence cases, leaving many girls unprotected (Home Office & Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, 2022).

Conclusion

The review of femicide cases in Iran reveals a legal and social order that systematically privileges male authority and family honor over the lives and rights of women. Despite limited reforms such as the Romina Law, structural inequalities, the persistence of child marriage, and restricted access to protective and support services continue to place women at acute risk. The reported nearly 60 percent increase in femicides in the first half of 2024 is not an isolated fluctuation but a predictable outcome of a legal structure that reinforces gender hierarchy (Stop Femicide Iran, 2024).

Within the judicial framework of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the law does not simply fail to prevent violence. It actively embeds, codifies, and legitimizes it as a tool of patriarchal control. This transforms gender-based killing from prosecutable crime into state-sanctioned enforcement of male authority and family honor. Existing legal provisions shield certain male family members (fathers and paternal grandfathers) from full criminal accountability for killing their daughters or wives under specific circumstances. By granting reduced punishment or exemptions in cases framed around paternal authority or claims of honor, the state effectively moves its power into the domestic sphere and weakens the protection of women within their own homes. In practice, this makes a woman’s right to life conditional and unequal.

When the legal system treats daughters as subject to paternal control and wives as subordinate to husbands, violence becomes a method of enforcing social order rather than a clear violation of law. Describing these rules as merely cultural or religious obscures their status as binding state legislation. Their continued enforcement contradicts international human rights standards and normalizes impunity for gender based killing.

Addressing femicide in Iran therefore requires more than symbolic reform. It demands the removal of legal exemptions that diminish women’s legal status and a broader restructuring of laws that institutionalize inequality. Without such change, femicide cannot be understood solely as a private tragedy, but as violence enabled and sustained by the legal system itself. The protection of women’s lives must become a central and non-negotiable principle in both domestic reform and international human rights engagement.

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Glossary

• Adultery: Voluntary sexual intercourse by a married person with someone other than their spouse. It is often viewed as a moral or legal violation in many societies.

• Child Custody: The legal right and responsibility of a parent or guardian to care for and make decisions about a minor child after separation or divorce. Courts decide it based on the child's best interests.

• Cleric: A religious leader or priest authorized to perform sacred rites in faiths like Islam, Christianity, or Judaism. They often interpret religious laws and guide communities.

• Diya: Diya is blood money paid in Islamic law to compensate the victim's family in cases of murder or injury, as an alternative to harsher punishments. It aims to promote reconciliation.

• Family Protection Laws: In this text, refers to Iran's Family Protection Law of 1967 which modernized family regulations by requiring court approval for polygamy and raising the minimum marriage age to 15 for girls and 18 for boys. It granted women new divorce rights on grounds like spousal abuse or desertion after mediation. The law was repealed post-1979 Revolution in favor of Sharia-based rules.

• Femicide: “Femicide is generally understood to involve intentional murder of women because they are women, but broader definitions include any killings of women or girls.”

• Gender Identity: A person’s psychological sense of self in relation to their gender. Many people describe gender identity as a deeply felt, inherent sense of being a boy, a man, or male; a girl, a woman, or female; or a nonbinary gender (e.g., genderqueer, gender-neutral, agender, gender-fluid, transgender) that may or may not correspond to a person’s sex assigned at birth, presumed gender based on sex assignment, or primary or secondary sex characteristics. 

• Gheirat: A cultural concept of protective honor, pride, and jealousy, especially tied to family reputation and women's chastity in Middle Eastern contexts. It can motivate extreme actions if violated.

• Hadd: Fixed punishments in Islamic law for specific crimes like theft or adultery, prescribed directly in the Quran or Hadith. They require strict evidence for application.

• Himpathy: Excessive public sympathy or support given to male perpetrators of violence against women, often at the expense of the female victim. It critiques biased narratives in media or law.

• Honor Killing: The murder of a family member, usually a woman, by relatives to restore family honor tarnished by perceived sexual misconduct or disobedience. It persists in some regions despite illegality.

• Islamic Revolution: The 1979 uprising in Iran that overthrew the monarchy and established an Islamic Republic under Ayatollah Khomeini. Unlike most of the other uprisings that would topple dictators in Latin America, Eastern Europe, and parts of Asia and Africa, the result of the Iranian struggle was not the establishment of liberal democracy but of a new form of authoritarianism. 

• Jurisprudence: The theory or philosophy of law, including its principles and methods of interpretation. In Islam, it is Fiqh, the human understanding of Sharia.

• Kurdish: An ethnic group native to the Middle East, primarily in Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria, with their own language and culture. They number around 30-40 million.

• Mandatory Public Dress Code: Mandatory public dress code requires specific clothing, like hijab for women in Iran, enforced by law to uphold Islamic modesty standards. Violations can lead to penalties.

• Middle East: The Middle East is a region in Western Asia and North Africa, including countries like Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. It is known for its cultural, religious, and geopolitical importance.

• Penal Code: A penal code is a set of laws defining crimes and their punishments in a country. Iran's penal code incorporates Islamic principles alongside modern statutes.

• Perpetrator: The person who commits a crime or harmful act. They are held legally responsible for the offense.

• Qisas: Prescribed in Islamic law for murder, voluntary manslaughter, involuntary killing, intentional physical injury, and unintentional physical injury. 

• Retribution: Retribution is punishment inflicted as vengeance or repayment for a wrong, like in Qisas where harm matches the crime. It differs from deterrence by focusing on deserved penalty.

• Sexual Orientation: A person’s sexual and emotional attraction to another person and the behavior and/or social affiliation that may result from this attraction. Some examples of sexual orientation are lesbian, gay, heterosexual, straight, asexual, bisexual, queer, polysexual, and pansexual (also called multisexual and omnisexual).

• Shia: The second-largest branch of Islam.

• Transgender: An umbrella term used to describe the full range of people whose gender identity and/or gender role do not conform to what is typically associated with their sex assigned at birth.

• Victim: A victim is a person who suffers harm, injury, or death from a crime or wrongdoing. 

• Violation of Human Rights: Actions that infringe upon the fundamental rights and freedoms entitled to every individual, including abuses related to race, gender, and social status. These violations are critical issues within the fields of ethics, social sciences, and efforts against discrimination, highlighting the need for advocacy and protection of human dignity globally.

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Sources

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