UN Human Rights Council head, Federico Villegas, announced Shaheen Sardar Ali, a Pakistani law professor, along with Sara Hossain, a lawyer from Bangladesh supreme court, and Viviana Krsticevic, a human rights activist from Argentina, as the independent members of the fact-finding mission.
Shaheen Sardar Ali is a British Pakistani law professor and author who formerly served as chair of the National Commission on the Status of Women of Pakistan. Born in Swat in 1955, Shaheen obtained her BA, LLB, and MA in Political Science from the University of Peshawar. After completing her LLM in international law at Hull University, she returned to Pakistan and gained a professorship at Peshawar University in 1995.
She now serves as a law professor at the University of Warwick. Her research and teaching interests include international law of human rights, women’s and children’s rights, and Islamic law and jurisprudence.
The three women will document the Iranian authorities’ repression of the protests and potential human rights violations. The step will be taken to take possible legal action against officials in Iran or elsewhere.
Iran is highly unlikely to allow the trio to enter the country and carry out its mission. Tehran fiercely opposes the creation of the international investigation that 47 rights council members voted for last month.