UN human rights experts urged Iran to halt the execution of a 25-year-old victim of child marriage whose death sentence is scheduled to be carried out this month after allegedly killing her abusive husband during a domestic dispute.
According to the experts, which include Mai Sato, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran, Goli Kouhkan was forced into marriage at the age of 12 to her cousin and endured years of physical and psychological abuse while working as a farm laborer.
Kouhkan gave birth at home at 13 without medical care. Attempts to escape the marriage failed because of her undocumented status a Baloch minority and societal pressure, the experts said.
In May 2018, her husband beat both her and their five-year-old son. After a relative was called to help, a confrontation ensued that resulted in her husband’s death, according to the experts.
"Iranian courts failed to consider the sustained pattern of abuse or assess specific circumstances surrounding her actions," the experts said in their statement.
They added that during interrogation, Kouhkan, an illiterate woman with no legal representation, was pressured into a confession that formed the basis of her death sentence.
“Goli Kouhkan is a survivor of domestic violence and a victim of the justice system,” the experts said.
“Her execution would represent a profound injustice. The State would be killing a woman who endured years of gender-based violence while defending herself and her child,” they added.
The husband's family agreed to forgo execution only if she pays 100 billion rials (USD 85,000) in blood money, “an amount considerably higher than the recommended rate and far beyond her reach, especially as an undocumented woman who has been rejected by her family,” the experts said.
“This is a woman who was sold into marriage as a child, brutalized for years, and then abandoned by her family and the justice system,” the experts said. “Her case starkly illustrates how gender discrimination and ethnic marginalization intersect to create profound injustice.”
The experts said at least 241 women were executed between 2010 and 2024, including 114 sentenced to death for homicide, many of whom had allegedly killed a husband or intimate partner after years of domestic violence or child marriage.
In Iran, the legal marriage age for girls is 13, and even younger with a guardian’s and judge’s approval. Rights groups say girls and women have little protection from domestic violence, and women face major obstacles when trying to divorce.
