UN fact-finding mission: 221 children killed in the Dey uprising

Viviana Krsticevic, a member of the UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran, told the Third Committee of the UN General Assembly that the mission's records show at least 221 children were killed by the Islamic Republic's security forces during the Dey 1404 (January 2026) uprising. The youngest of them, she said, was four months old.

Krsticevic spoke on Wednesday, 28 October 2026, at a session of the Third Committee, which deals with human rights. She said the Islamic Republic has published a list of about 3,000 people who died during the protests, but that there are grounds to believe the real number of those killed is far higher.

Executions of protesters and tens of thousands arrested

According to the fact-finding mission member, at least 34 men have been executed in connection with the protests since the start of 2026, and more than 100 people, including women and children, are at risk of execution. Arrests during and after the Dey uprising have reached tens of thousands.

These figures go beyond the mission's September report. In that report, published on 14 September, the mission documented the execution of at least 29 men after hasty trials, five of them in public; at the time more than 70 people were at risk of execution. In recent weeks, Revolutionary Courts have sentenced Shahab Zohdi and four other Dey uprising detainees to death, and the Supreme Court has upheld the death sentence of Mohammad Naderi.

Repression as the regime's strategy

Krsticevic said the crackdown on protesters in the 2022 uprising and the Dey 1404 uprising involved "gross and systematic" human rights violations, and that many of these acts may amount to crimes against humanity. Repressing dissent, she said, is a deliberate strategy of the authorities, not the scattered behaviour of a few agents.

She spoke of torture and ill-treatment of detainees, sexual violence, arbitrary detention and denial of fair trials, and added that many families, including families of children, still do not know what happened to their loved ones. Internet restrictions, she said, are a tool to hide these violations and to track down activists.

The fact-finding mission was set up by the UN Human Rights Council after the 2022 uprising, and in Bahman 1404 (early 2026) the Council expanded its mandate to an urgent investigation of the crackdown on the Dey uprising.

According to the UN fact-finding mission, at least 221 children were killed in the Dey uprising and more than 100 people are at risk of execution.