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The Human Rights and Democracy Library is an electronic database containing books, articles, memoirs, letters, documents, and information that sheds light on the violation of human rights and furthers the knowledge, understanding,
dissemination, and implementation of human rights and democracy in Iran. Whenever possible or necessary, the documents and writings are available both in Farsi and English. This library is made up of several collections whose contents are distinct but each collection can in its own way support the defense and promotion of democracy and human rights in Iran.
This Library is continually adding new material.
» Iran's Pro-democracy Voices This collection contains letters, communiqués and documents relevant to Iran's current pro-democracy movement.
» Human Rights Instruments This collection contains all internationally adopted declarations, covenants, principles, conventions and protocols that guarantee and organize the implementation of the individual's natural rights in political, judicial, social, economic and private spheres. These instruments are part of the common heritage of humanity and although the rights they advocate do not enjoy the same legal status, their implementation is morally desirable regardless of their status in international law. A number of these instruments have been translated in Persian for the first time.
» Human Rights Debate Texts related to debates and controversies regarding human rights will be gathered in this collection, which includes topics such as capital punishment, truth commissions, cultural relativism, women, religious and minority rights.
» International Human Rights Organizations' Reports on Human Rights Abuses in Iran Reports on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran published since 1979 by international human rights organizations are gathered in this collection and will gradually be translated into Farsi. In doing so, the library makes available to the Iranian public a juridical reasoning based on the universality of human rights and thus facilitates the understanding of these rights. By browsing this collection, Iranian visitors will realize that during the harsh years of isolation and repression, the injustice and violence endured by this nation was not ignored by the international community and people around the world have been concerned about their rights. What is more, these reports contain important pages of Iran's history, and so should be available to the public. The creation of this collection is also a way for the Abdorrahman Boroumand Foundation to pay tribute to those jurists and human rights advocates who have worked, researched and published these valuable documents.
» National Human Rights Organizations' Reports on the Situation of Human Rights in Iran This collection contains reports and articles by Iranian human rights groups and advocates. The number and quality of these texts is a good indicator of the level of the Iranian political elite's awareness of and sensitivity to human rights during the successive stages of the Islamic Republic's history.
Under construction
» The Islamic Republic against Human Rights This collection addresses the causes and circumstances of human rights violations by the Islamic Republic of Iran. It has four sub-collections. The first one deals with scholarly books and articles about the origins, nature and modalities of human rights violations in Iran. The second sub-collection gathers official statements and documents that reflect the rationale sustaining human rights violations. In the third sub-collection, documents related to the organization and functioning of the judiciary will be made available with analytical notes that stress the antithetical character of the existing system with human rights standards. The fourth one deals with laws and regulations in contradiction with human rights.
» Cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment in the Islamic Republic of Iran
» Official Documents This collection aims at archiving official documents and police investigations, be they from Iran or from foreign governments, which shed light on the executions and killings by the agents of the Islamic Republic in Iran and in foreign countries.
» Testimonies of Victims of Human Rights Abuses in Iran This collection is dedicated to documenting the suffering inflicted upon the victims of the regime. A number of former political prisoners have published their memoirs, excerpts of which will be made available in this collection both in Farsi and in English. Letters and complaints written by prisoners that depict the circumstances of the arrests and the conditions of detention will also be selected and translated. Excerpts from the memoirs and testimonies of the Islamic Republic's officials will be progressively archived and translated for this collection.
» The Idea of Democracy This collection is divided in two sub-collections.
1) Religion and Politics. Major classical texts of monotheist religions concerning the status of the human being in the body politic as well as the individual's relationship with God and secular authorities will be selected and translated into Farsi for this collection. This sub-collection contains four sections: A) Judaism and Democracy; B) Christianity and Democracy, C) Islam and Democracy and D) Other Religions and Democracy.
2) Democracy. This sub-collection is devoted to the idea of democracy and representative regimes. Texts regarding the religious and philosophical origins of the concept of human rights as well as basic writings regarding the idea of democracy and the advent of representative regimes constitute the content of this collection.
» History This collection is dedicated to the history of democracy and pro-democracy movements in Iran. Historical truth and collective memory are the first victims of totalitarian regimes. With no memory, people grow morally and intellectually dependent on their rulers. No wonder, therefore that freedom of the press was the first target of the nascent Islamic Republic. The History collection aims at archiving different documents that bear witness to the failures and successes of pro-democracy movements in Iran since the mid-19th century. By making these documents available to the young generation in particular, the library wishes to evoke forgotten figures and moments of pro-democracy struggle in the midst of revolutionary torment. This endeavor is a small contribution to the efforts of a generation to restore Iran's collective memory badly damaged by fifty years of dictatorship and twenty-five years of a violent totalitarian regime.
» Iran in Perspective
This collection includes a selection of Iran’s political issues viewed and analyzed through the prism of democratic principles. Its contents reflect exclusively the authors' views and not the position of the Abdorrahman Boroumand Foundation.
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