Iran’s Future Must Be Federal
Fariba Borhanzehi, a Baluch human-rights and women's rights activist, told the "Transition and Safeguarding Citizens’ Rights in Iran" conference in Oslo on 31 August 2024 that a decentralised, federal structure is essential for Iran’s future. “Without such a framework after the Islamic Republic,” she warned, “Baluch women will continue to face gender, identity and religious discrimination and remain excluded from sustainable development.”
She began with a historical overview of citizenship, noting how natural rights and human rights were articulated by Locke and Rousseau in the 17th and 18th centuries, later codified in the American (1776) and French (1789) revolutions. Iran’s Constitutional Revolution of 1906, she said, was also a landmark for popular sovereignty, but its gains were reversed by the 1921 coup and the rise of the Pahlavi monarchy, which entrenched centralised authoritarianism.
Defining a citizen as a legal member of a state entitled to civil, political, social, economic and cultural rights, Borhanzehi asked: “Are the rights of a Tehrani citizen equal to those of a Baluch?” She cited even official sources acknowledging that rural, Sunni Baluch women occupy the very lowest rung of Iran’s welfare hierarchy. Systematic discrimination over the past century, she argued, has left deep scars on marginalised communities.
She pointed to state-engineered environmental destruction in deprived regions, the killing of Baluch fuel traders and Kurdish porters, and the “Bloody Fridays” of Zahedan and Khash during the “Woman, Life, Freedom” uprising as stark examples of rights violations. Rebuilding trust, she said, will be extremely difficult, and only a democratic, citizen-based federal order can begin to close the divide.
“Iran is diverse and multi-coloured,” she declared. “Its future requires a plural, secular, and decentralised system—federal in form.” The precise model of federalism, she concluded, must be decided by experts and a future constituent assembly. Only then, she argued, can historic patterns of discrimination against women, ethnic and religious minorities, and other marginalised groups be dismantled, paving the way for sustainable development and dignity for all citizens.
Translated from Farsi via machine translation and lightly edited for clarity.