All posts tagged: Children’s rights

‘Schools are responsible’: Iran’s student suicides highlight growing tensions over its hijab laws

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The enforcement of hijab rules in Iran is once again making tragic headlines. Over the past two weeks, two teenage girls took their own lives after reportedly facing intense pressure in their schools. Sixteen-year-old Arezou Khavari jumped from a building, and 17-year-old Ainaz Karimi hanged herself. Both were students at public schools in impoverished regions of the country. According to Iranian teachers interviewed by me, the country’s education system is structured to exert relentless pressure on students – particularly young girls – to conform to the strict dictates of Islamic Sharia law. While news of student suicides occasionally surfaces in Iranian media for various reasons, this is the first reported instance of two teenage girls taking their lives specifically due to pressure over the hijab. The incidents have sparked fresh outrage across Iranian society. On October 27, Ainaz Karimi, 17, took her own life in a village near Kazerun, in southwestern Iran. She had reportedly been insulted, humiliated in front of her classmates, and threatened with expulsion for wearing nail polish and dyeing her hair. As punishment, she was banned from attending classes …

Iran: 7-year-old boy is latest child to lose arm to crocodile while fetching water

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A crocodile attack on a 7-year-old boy has refocused attention on the plight of villages in Iran’s southeastern Sistan and Baluchistan Province that lack running water. Residents say their children have no option but to fetch water from lakes and rivers, exposing them to the dangers of drowning and attacks by a species of marsh crocodile known locally as “gandos”. On Aug. 11, a 7-year-old boy named Amirhamzeh from the village of Houttag was attacked by a crocodile as he was fetching water for his family. His parents sent him to neighboring Pakistan for treatment, but the doctors were forced to amputate his left hand. While Iran does not publish statistics of crocodile attacks, locals say they are a regular occurrence. Last year a 9-year-old girl lost her arm in a crocodile attack, and an 8-year-old boy lost a leg. Sistan and Baluchistan is one of the most underdeveloped provinces of Iran, a poor region that shares 1100 km of border with Afghanistan and Pakistan. Many of the arid province’s villages are not connected to …