2
I. INTRODUCTION
This paper explores avenues through which IHRN enter Iran’s domestic contests
over women’s rights under Islamic law within the realm of governmental-civil society
politics. It maintains that contrary to mainstream theories which equate the effectiveness
of international law with its enforcement through coercive means or with measurements
of strict notions of compliance, the impact of IHRN can be more accurately located in
analysis that highlights the interplay between international legal norms, domestic identity
and norm constructions, consciousness and ultimately the behavior of key actors. By
looking beyond a top-down enforcement model and notions of strict compliance, the
study links reforms of the Islamic Republic’s codification of Shari’a that bring Iran’s
laws closer to the standards prescribed under international law to actor’s consciousness of
and engagement with IHRN (IHRN). In this manner, the research provides insight into
the more nuanced ways in which public international law can matter, even in domestic
settings widely considered hostile to IHRN.
The analysis in this paper is informed by insights from constructivist theory emerging
out of the international relations and international law disciplines. Constructivism
maintains that state and non-state actors are social beings and as such susceptible to
processes of learning, reflection, and socialization facilitated by normative influences.
Identity is a key constructivist variable. Accordingly, part two of the paper locates IHRN
in the Islamic Republic’s identity politics. Part three attempts to present a picture of how
women’s and reformist social movements endeavored to bring domestic norms in
congruence with internationally prescribed norms (namely, gender equality and non-
discrimination) in Iranian politics and society. Part four reviews some social and policy
outcomes of these groups’ efforts. Finally, the conclusion in part five presents a few
lessons from the Iranian experience.
II.
INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS NORMS IN IRANIAN
IDENTITY POLITICS
Amongst outside observers, an intuitive assumption that Iran’s 1979 Islamic
Revolution and the ideology that sustained it were born out of the new regime’s
conception of its identity as exclusively Islamic prevails. However, “identity is a plural
concept” and actors’ identities are frequently comprised of multi-faceted, sometimes
competing and sometimes reinforcing, dimensions “affected by diverse social
structures”.
1
In the case of the Islamic Republic, alongside Islamism, nationalism and
anti-imperialism played equally significant roles in the consolidation of the Islamic
Republic’s identity.
2
Because anti-imperialism and its infusion and incorporation into
Islamist discourse is the facet of Iranian revolutionary identity that has had the greatest
impact on contests over human rights and particularly women’s human rights, in Iran, it
1
Jutta Brunnee and Stephen J. Toope, “International Law and Constructivism: Elements of an Interactional
Theory of International Law” (20000) 39 Columbia J. of Transnational L. 10-74, at 67.
2
Suzanne Maloney, Identity and Foreign Policy in the Middle East, ed. by Shibley Telhami & Michael
Barnett (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2002) at 94.
Convention