twenty-seven organizations, collectives, and groups have signed this letter in support of the campaign to expel the Islamic Republic from the International Labour Organization (ILO). Signatures continue to grow.
On June 1, 2026, the 114th Annual Conference of the ILO will be held, and once again, representatives of the criminal regime of the Islamic regime will attend as the “Iran representatives”. The Islamic regime does not absolutely represent the people of Iran; it is the enemy, oppressor, and murderer of the Iranian people.
The Islamic regime is a regime whose foundations are built on repression, executions, poverty, discrimination, and the killing of workers and ordinary people. For more than four decades, this government has imprisoned, tortured, and executed labor activists, women, teachers, students, and protesters.
The Islamic Republic is a member of the ILO, yet under its rule all conventions of this organization—which claims to defend workers’ rights—are openly violated. In Iran under the Islamic regime, unionization, political organization, basic political freedoms, and any form of protest are treated as crimes. Even now, large numbers of labor activists, protesting teachers, students, healthcare workers, and other protesters remain imprisoned.
Today, Iran is undergoing an accelerating process of economic and social collapse, pushing the lives of millions to the edge of catastrophe. This is the result of decades of corruption, plunder, warmongering, and the systematic destruction of the country’s economic infrastructure. The recent war with US and Israel, a direct consequence of the Islamic Republic’s militaristic policies, has further intensified this collapse. The regime not only has no answer to the people’s economic crisis, but also seeks to finance its wars, machinery of repression, and crimes from the people’s already empty tables.
Today, Iran faces widespread absolute poverty and hunger. Unleashed inflation, a tsunami of unemployment, the rapid growth of millions of unemployed people, escalating repression and executions, and the regime’s war-driven policies have pushed society to the brink of explosion.
Terrified of its own overthrow, the Islamic Republic uses the cover of war to brutally suppress any protest under the accusation of “collaboration with the enemy.” Arrests increase every day, and death sentences are being issued at an intensified pace.
The Islamic Republic fires bullets at its opponents. In January 2026 , continuing the “Woman, Life, Freedom” revolution, the people of Iran took to the streets in more than 200 cities chanting: “Poverty, corruption, high prices — we will fight until overthrow.” The regime’s response was direct gunfire at protesters and the massacre of tens of thousands of demonstrators in the streets over the course of two days. Since then, waves of executions, arrests, and repression have followed.
Before this, we also witnessed the bloody suppression of the people during the “Woman, Life, Freedom” uprising in 2022, the missile attack on Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 in 2020 that killed all 176 passengers and crew, and the massacre of protesters in the marshlands of Mahshahr in 2019. These are only a few prominent examples from the regime’s vast record of crimes—one nearly unparalleled in modern history.
In addition, the lives of thousands of political prisoners and detained protesters currently held in the prisons of the Islamic Republic are in danger, and many face the threat of execution.
The membership of such a regime in the ILO is a stain on the conscience of modern history and international institutions.
The crimes of the Islamic Republic are far too extensive to fit into a single letter. Yet even these examples are sufficient grounds for the immediate expulsion of this anti-worker, anti-woman, child-killing regime from all international institutions, including the International Labour Organization.
The Islamic Republic must be globally isolated and boycotted, just as the apartheid regime of South Africa once was, and its leaders must be tried in international courts. Expelling the regime’s representatives from the ILO is the first necessary step in this direction.
We, the undersigned, demand the expulsion of the Islamic Republic from the International Labour Organization and the prevention of its representatives from attending the 114th Annual Conference of this organization.
Hear our voice. This is the voice of the people of Iran.
May 12, 2026
Signatories:
- Free Them Now, the campaign to free jailed workers in Iran
- Global Network for the Freedom of Political and Ideological Prisoners
- The Committee for the Freedom of Political Prisoners in Iran
- Global Campaign Against Executions
- Network of Cooperation of the Woman, Life, Freedom Movement in Italy
- Global Campaign Against the Death Penalty
- Women’s Rights Organization
- Iran Protest Malmö
- Iran Protest Helsingborg
- Defenders of Children’s Rights in Iran
- Alliance for Woman, Life, Freedom
- International Committee Against Executions
- Joint Congress of Democratic Republicans and Federal Democrats
- Canadian Iranian Doctors for Human Rights (CIDHR)
- Woman, Life, Freedom Group – Gothenburg
- Tuesdays Against Executions – Cologne
- Khavaran Association
- Solidarity with Iranians – Vancouver, Canada
- A Group of Third-Party Contract Workers in the Oil Industry
- A Group of Retirees in Arak
- Organization of Activists for the Path of Freedom of Iran – Hamburg
- Sattar Beheshti Foundation
- Supporters of the Mothers of Laleh Park – Fresno
- Alliance of Leftist Women
- Center for Culture and Art
- 26- Association of Political Prisoners of Iranian Kurdistan
- Tuesdays Against Execution – Frankfurt
…and more signatures continue.