Gender Persecution in Iran

Speakers: ​

Dr Saba Vasefi (University of Sydney)

Dr Saba Vasefi is a multi-award-winning scholar-journalist, documentary filmmaker and poet at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Sydney. She is an Honorary Postdoctoral Fellow at Macquarie University. Saba is on the Expert Advisory Board of the Australian Research Council project "The Forgotten Children, Ten Years On," investigating the long-term effects of immigration detention on minors in Australia.

She is the founder and director of the Writing in Resistance initiative, which mentors women, girls, and non-binary refugees facing displacement and detention. The initiative utilizes creative and intercultural methodologies to empower them to voice their experiences through public speaking and creative writing.

Her expertise spans interdisciplinary and feminist contributions to Film, Literature, Media Studies, Iranian Studies, and Refugee Studies. Her research interests include exilic feminist cinema, the death penalty, extrajudicial killings, gendered carceral regimes, and the gendered violence of Australia’s extraterritorial asylum regime on Nauru.

Invited by the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee as an expert on state violence, she testified during the inquiry into human rights violations in Iran. Her current research focuses on the arbitrary and extrajudicial execution and mob killings of Bahá'ís following the Islamic Revolution. Her book, “Defiant Frames in Accented Feminist Films,” is under contract with Routledge.

She was a jury member for the Kennedy Awards for Outstanding Reporting on Human Rights and has received recognition from the Australian Human Rights Commission awards, the National Council of Women of NSW, Women’s Agenda Leadership Awards, and Premier Multicultural Media Awards. She was a member of the Committee of Human Rights Reporters and also worked as a researcher for the International Campaign for Human Rights based in New York.

Her award-winning journalism extensively covers the refugee health crisis in Australian offshore detention centers, particularly the conditions faced by women and children, including instances of sexual violence and denial of medical care. Her work has appeared in media outlets such as the BBC, Australian Associated Press, The Guardian, ABC, Al Jazeera, SBS, The Age, and the Sydney Morning Herald, Women’s Weekly Magazine. Her poem "The Portable Home" was selected as one of the Best Australian Poems of 2022 by Australian Poetry.

Saba has a postgraduate degree in documentary filmmaking from the Australian Film Television and Radio School and her documentary films have been screened by the BBC, the UN, Amnesty International, Copenhagen Film Festival, the Seen and Heard Film Festival, the Human Rights Film Festival, the Exile Films Festival, and at UCLA among other special screenings around the world.

Prof. Sara Hossain (SOAS)

Sara Hossain is a Senior Advocate at the Supreme Court of Bangladesh, practicing in the areas of constitutional, corporate and family law. She is a partner at the law firm of Dr. Kamal Hossain and Associates, and also serves pro bono as the Honorary Executive Director of the Bangladesh Legal Aid and Services Trust (BLAST). She is currently a Professor of Practice at SOAS, University of London.

She has been involved in landmark cases and campaigns before the Supreme Court of Bangladesh on gender equality (‘fatwa’ violence, discriminatory rape laws, sexual harassment, custody and guardianship, forced marriage), prohibition of corporal punishment in schools, and protection against torture and freedom of expression, forced eviction and displacement, among others.

Sara has been recently appointed as the chair of the new Fact-Finding Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran by the UN Human Rights Council. Sara previously served on the UN Commission of Inquiry on the 2018 Protests in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and on the UN Expert Group on Accountability in the DPRK, in both cases appointed by the President of the UN Human Rights Council, and on the Advisory Board of the UN Voluntary Fund on Victims of Torture. She was also a Commissioner of the International Commission of Jurists, and a founding member of the Board of the South Asia Women’s Fund (now the Women’s Fund for Asia).

Among her current affiliations, Sara is an Overseas Bencher of the Middle Temple, an advisory board member of the regional network, South Asians for Human Rights, a member of the United Nations University- International Institute of Global Health’s High- Level Advisory Committee, and a member of national civil society organisations, Ain o Salish Kendra, D-Net, IID, and the Madaripur Legal Aid Association.

Sara was educated at Wadham College, Oxford (1988), and called to the Bar from Middle Temple (1989), then enrolled in the High Court Division of the Supreme Court of Bangladesh (1992) and the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court (2008).

Sara has received awards for her work from among others the Lawyers’ Committee for Human Rights and the US State Department (Women of Courage).

She writes and speaks on issues of women’s rights, discrimination, freedom of expression and access to justice. Her publications include (co-edited with Lynn Welchman) ‘Honour’: Crimes Paradigms and Violence against Women (2005, Zed Press) and Remedies for Forced Marriage: A Handbook for Lawyers (2007, Interights, London).

Moderators:

Ana-Diamond Aaba Atach AKC (University of Oxford)

Ana-Diamond Aaba Atach, also known as Ana Diamond, is the Alistair Horne Visiting Fellow at St Antony's College, Oxford, and previously a Clarendon Scholar in Modern Middle Eastern Studies at Balliol College, Oxford.

Born in Iran and uprooted into various countries as a refugee child, Ana-Diamond is now a British social scientist and award-winning writer whose work engages with issues of gender, digital agency and activism, and broader human rights in the Middle East.

With a focus on amplifying the voices of Iranian women, Ana-Diamond’s advocacy and research on women's rights have been recognised internationally, with coverage in prominent media outlets. Her own story of unlawful detention in Evin Pr*son—after returning to Iran in 2014 at the age of 19, where she was held for four years under false accusations of espionage for “hostile Western governments”—has also been widely covered.

Her literary contributions on the stories of Iranian women have received recognition and support from Merky Books-Penguin Random House, the London Library, and Spread the Word, among others.

She is currently writing a historical non-fiction work, interwoven with memoir, exploring the ongoing fight for visibility, voice, and choice among Iranian women across generations."

Misbah Reshi (University of Oxford)

Misbah Reshi is a DPhil in Law Candidate at University of Oxford. Prior to this, she pursued her Master’s in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Her doctoral thesis looks at the intersection of religious freedom and discrimination laws in India.

She has been a contributor to reports on human rights as a Researcher for Citizens Against Hate and Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society. Her academic interests lie in gender discrimination, religious freedom, human rights law, and Kashmir.

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