Human Rights and Agents of Change in Iran

234 Pages·2018·2.32 MB·English

by  Rebecca Barlow

HUMAN RIGHTS AND AGENTS OF CHANGE IN IRAN
TOWARDS A THEORY OF CHANGE
Edited by Rebecca Barlow & Shahram Akbarzadeh
Studies in Iranian Politics
Series Editor
Shahram Akbarzadeh
Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship
and Globalisation, Deakin University
Burwood, VIC, Australia
This series offers much-needed insights into the internal and external
dynamics of the Islamic Republic of Iran. A major player in the Middle
East, Iran faces a range of challenges and opportunities that have significant
ramifications for its citizens and the neighbourhood. Questions of political
representation, Islamic rule, as well as youth and civil society movements
are contentious topics in a state that feels besieged by hostile forces. The
intersection of such factors present fascinating case-studies. Studies in
Iranian Politics will publish ground-breaking research that draw on original
sources and contribute to our understanding of contemporary Iran.
Advisory Board:
Prof. Mohammed Ayoob, Michigan State University
Prof. Anoush Ehteshami, Durham University
Prof. Mehran Kamrava, Georgetown University
Prof. Mahmood Sariolghalam, Shahid Beheshti University
More information about this series at
http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15186
Rebecca Barlow • Shahram Akbarzadeh
Editors
Human Rights and
Agents of Change in
Iran
Towards a Theory of Change
Editors
Rebecca Barlow Shahram Akbarzadeh
Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship
and Globalisation, Deakin University and Globalisation, Deakin University
Burwood, VIC, Australia Burwood, VIC, Australia
ISSN 2524-4132 ISSN 2524-4140 (electronic)
Studies in Iranian Politics
ISBN 978-981-10-8823-0 ISBN 978-981-10-8824-7 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-8824-7
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018944129
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018
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C
ontents
Part I I ntroduction 1
1 Top-Down or Bottom-Up? Towards a Theory of Change
for Human Rights Practice in Iran 3
Rebecca Barlow and Shahram Akbarzadeh
Part II Top-Down: The State and the Law as Entry Points
for Change 25
2 The ‘Inside-Track’ Approach to Change in Iran Under
President Rouhani: The Case of Freedom on the Internet 27
Dara Conduit and Shahram Akbarzadeh
3 Indigenising ‘Modernisation’ in Iran 51
Ghoncheh Tazmini
4 Iranian Lawyers for Human Rights: The Defenders
of Human Rights Center 65
Leila Alikarami
v
vi CoNTENTS
Part III Bottom-Up: The Grassroots as an Entry Point for
Change 81
5 Is Grassroots Justice a Viable Alternative to Impunity?
The Case of the Iran People’s Tribunal 83
Payam Akhavan
6 Secular and Islamic Feminist Work to Increase
Parliamentary Representation in Iran: Towards
an Alliance? 105
Rebecca Barlow
7 Struggles for Revival: The Iranian Student Movement
under the ‘Moderate’ Government, 2013–2017 127
Ali Honari
8 Environmentalism and Social Change in Iran 143
Simin Fadaee
9 Ethnic Minorities and the Question of Liberal
Multiculturalism in Iran 157
Meysam Badamchi
Part IV Conclusion 177
10 Intersecting Issues and Their Implications for Human
Rights Practice in Iran 179
Rebecca Barlow and Shahram Akbarzadeh
Selected Bibliography 205
Index 215
n C
otes on ontributors
Shahram Akbarzadeh is Research Professor of Middle East & Central
Asian Politics at the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and
Globalisation, Deakin University, Australia. He has an active research
interest in the politics of Central Asia, Islam, Muslims in Australia and the
Middle East. Shahram is author of Uzbekistan and the United States (Zed
Books, 2011), US Foreign Policy in the Middle East (with Kylie Baxter,
Routledge, 2008), Muslim Active Citizenship in the West (with Mario
Peucker, Routledge, 2014), and The Politics and International Relations
of the Middle East (with Kylie Baxter, Routledge, 2018). He is the
founding Editor of the Islamic Studies Series, published by Melbourne
University Press, and a regular public commentator.
Payam Akhavan is an Associate Professor at McGill University’s Faculty
of Law (Montreal, Quebec). Payam teaches and researches on public
international law, international dispute settlement, international criminal
law, human rights and cultural pluralism. He received the degree of
Doctor of the Science of Jurisprudence (SJD) from Harvard Law
School and, prior to joining McGill, he was a Senior Fellow at Yale
Law School, and a United Nations prosecutor at The Hague. In
2016, he was appointed a Member of the Permanent Court of
Arbitration established under the 1899 Hague Convention on the
Pacific Settlement of Disputes.
Leila Alikarami is a lawyer and human rights advocate who has repre-
sented dozens of prisoners of conscience in Iran’s Revolutionary Courts.
She was an active member of Iran’s one Million Signatures Campaign
vii
viii NoTES oN CoNTRIBUToRS
demanding changes to all discriminatory laws against women. In 2009,
she accepted the RAW in War Anna Politkovskaya Award on behalf of the
women involved in the Campaign. Leila has written extensively on
the issue of women’s rights in Iran. She holds a PhD from the School
of oriental and African Studies (SoAS) at the University of London,
where she is a Sakharov Fellow.
Meysam Badamchi holds a PhD from Luiss Guido Carli University in
Rome, with a dissertation entitled Political Liberalism for Muslim Majority
Societies. Since September 2013 Meysam has been a Postdoctoral Research
Fellow at the Center for Modern Turkish Studies at Şehir University in
Istanbul. His fields of research include contemporary political theory
in Anglo-American and Muslim traditions, political liberalism, mul-
ticulturalism, and nationalism in Muslim contexts, Iranian and
Turkish political thought, and Iranian and Turkish politics. Meysam
is the author of Post-Islamist Political Theory: Iranian Intellectuals and
Political Liberalism in Dialogue (Springer’s ‘Philosophy and Politics—
Critical Explorations’ series, 2017). He has published in a range of
peer-reviewed journals, including Philosophy & Social Criticism and
Iranian Studies. Meysam is a regular commentator on Turikish poli-
tics for BBC Persian and a freelance writer for variety of Iranian
websites in the diaspora.
Rebecca  Barlow is a Senior Research Fellow at the Alfred Deakin
Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University, Melbourne,
Australia. Her research interests include women’s leadership in
Muslim contexts, with a focus on the Iranian women’s movement
and the politics of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Rebecca is the author of Universal Women’s Human Rights and the
Muslim Question: Iran’s One Million Signatures Campaign (Melbourne
University Publishing, 2012). Her work has been published in a
range of peer-reviewed journals, including Human Rights Quarterly,
Third World Quarterly, and the Social Movement Studies. In 2007
Rebecca was one of only four postgraduate research students selected
globally to act as Rapporteur at the Nobel Women’s Initiative’s first
international conference Women Redefining Peace in the Middle East
and Beyond (Galway, Ireland). She has also interned and acted as
Consultant for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)
Gender, Human Rights and Culture Branch, where she worked with a
NoTES oN CoNTRIBUToR S ix
team to implement the United Nations Global Forum of Faith-b ased
organisations in Population and Development (Istanbul, Turkey, 2008).
Dara Conduit is an Associate Research Fellow at Deakin University. Her
work has been published in the British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies,
Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, International Community Law Review
and the Middle East Journal. Ms. Conduit also holds a M. Litt from the
University of St. Andrews, was a Visiting Scholar at the University of
Cambridge in 2015 and has provided advice to the UN oHCHR’s
Working Group on Mercenaries. She recently submitted her PhD thesis
on the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria.
Simin Fadaee is a Research Fellow in the Department of Sociology,
University of Manchester. She received her PhD in Sociology from Albert-
Ludwigs University of Freiburg in Germany and taught for several years at
Humboldt University of Berlin before joining the University of
Sheffield. Simin’s research focuses broadly on issues of political soci-
ology, social movements and activism, environmentalism and envi-
ronmental politics. She is the author of Social Movements in Iran:
Environmentalism and Civil Society (Routledge, 2012) and the editor
of Understanding Southern Social Movements (Routledge, 2016). Simin
also serves as a board member of the Research Committee on Social
Movements and Social Classes (RC47) of the International
Sociological Association (ISA).
Ali Honari is a Research Fellow at the Department of Sociology, Vrije
Universiteit Amsterdam. He holds an MA in Sociology from the Inter-
University Centre for Social Science Theory and Methodology (ICS) at
the University of Groningen. Ali’s primary research interests include social
movements, repression, social network analysis, political participation, and
Iranian civil society, particularly the Iranian student movement. He has
served on the editorial board of prominent Iranian journals dedicated to
social and political affairs, including Goftogu. He is a frequent contributor
to several Iranian journals.
Ghoncheh  Tazmini has a PhD in International Relations from the
University of Kent at Canterbury, and a Masters in Russian and Post-
Soviet Studies from the London School of Economics. Ghoncheh is the
author of Khatami’s Iran (I.B. Tauris, 2009, 2013) and Revolution and
Reform in Russia and Iran (I.B. Tauris, 2012). Ghoncheh was formerly