Human Rights Council to Hold Special Session to Address the Deteriorating Human Rights Situation in the Islamic Republic of Iran on 23 January 2026

The United Nations Human Rights Council will hold a special session to address the deteriorating human rights situation in the Islamic Republic of Iran on Friday, 23 January 2026.

The special session will take place in the Assembly Hall at the Palais des Nations in Geneva starting 2 p.m. (GMT+1). The meeting will be webcast live in the six official languages of the United Nations.

The special session is being convened following an official request submitted today by Iceland, together with Germany, North Macedonia, the Republic of Moldova and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

For a special session to be convened, the support of one-third of the 47 members of the Council – 16 or more – is required.  This request is so far supported by the following 21 States members of the Council: Albania, Bulgaria, Chile, Colombia, Cyprus, Czechia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Estonia, France, Iceland, Italy, Japan, Mauritius, Netherlands (Kingdom of the), North Macedonia, the Republic of Korea, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

The request is also supported by the following 30 observer States at the Council: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Croatia, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco, Montenegro, New Zealand, Norway, Paraguay, Poland, Portugal, the Republic of Moldova, Romania, Slovakia, Sweden, Ukraine and Uruguay.

The list of signatories remains open until the special session takes place.  Therefore, the above list of States is to be considered provisional.

Before the special session takes place, the Council will convene a separate meeting to hold an open-ended informative consultation on organizational matters. This consultation will be held on Thursday, 22 January in the Assembly Hall, immediately after the conclusion of the review of Saint Lucia by the Universal Periodic Review Working Group, scheduled to be held from 9 a.m. to 12.30 p.m.

This will be the thirty-ninth special session of the Human Rights Council since it was founded in 2006. The full list of special sessions of the Human Rights Council can be seen here.

For more information and media requests, please contact Pascal Sim, Human Rights Council Media Officer, at simp@un.org, or Matthew Brown, Human Rights Public Information Officer at matthew.brown@un.org.

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not an official record. English and French versions of our releases are different as they are the product of two separate coverage teams that work independently.

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