With increasing inflationary pressure in Iran and household livelihoods at risk, people with disabilities face more challenges than ever before, with no clear outlook for their livelihoods. Some disability pensioners say that disabled retirees are now at the bottom of the pension income hierarchy, and with pensions below 10 million rials (approximately 16 dollars), their difficulties have worsened.
The state-run ILNA news agency, quoting disabled retirees, reported that in recent years, the prices of many goods have increased by up to 400%, creating a “strange gap” between wages and the cost of living.
The report mentions Article 27 of the Comprehensive Law for the Disabled, which requires the government to ensure that the minimum social security salary is provided to people with severe and very severe disabilities. However, even this minimum is not being paid.
This news agency, quoting a representative of disabled retirees and an advocate for disability rights, wrote, “In the past two years, the disabled community has been abandoned by the Welfare Organization. The worst period for disabled individuals has been these past two years since the organization’s leadership changed.”
This representative emphasized, “Currently, the pension for a disabled person is about 9.7 million rials (approximately 16 dollars)! In other words, the pension for a disabled individual has still not reached 10 million rials.”
The ILNA report states that there are over 600,000 severely and very severely disabled individuals in the country who are unemployed, and the law does not apply to all of them.
Behrouz Morvati, a disability rights activist, stated in August that last year’s protests were aimed at enforcing Article 27 of the Law for the Protection of Disabled Persons with a proposed subsidy of 100 million rials (approximately 160 dollars), but “we don’t even receive 20 million rials in total. This amount doesn’t solve any problems for disabled individuals.”
In June, a group of “independent activists” wrote a letter to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, highlighting the participation of the head of the Iranian Welfare Organization at the 17th conference of this international body. They emphasized the Iranian regime’s disregard for the rights of its disabled citizens.
In this letter dated June 10, it was noted that Ali Mohammad Ghaderi, head of the Welfare Organization, attended the 17th Global Conference on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, even though “the Iranian regime has ignored the provisions of the 2006 UN Convention, and the recommendations sent to Iran, and has not even implemented the 2017 Law for the Protection of Disabled Persons domestically.”
