The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has renewed its request for the release of Niloufar Bayani and eight other environmental activists jailed in Iran.
Recall that In February 2018, eight climate activists, including Bayani, were arrested for espionage and later given severe prison terms in Iran. Bayani served as a consultant based out of UNEP’s Geneva office between 2012 and 2017.
In a statement on Monday, the UN agency said that Bayani had been imprisoned for five years and that it was requesting clemency for her safe return home.
The agency said, “It has now been five years since her imprisonment. Taking note of the pardons recently issued by the Iranian authorities, the United Nations Environment Programme renews its call for clemency and for the safe return home of Ms Bayani, and indeed all the environmental conservationists imprisoned in Iran”.
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It said that Ms Bayani- a deeply committed and hardworking colleague- focused on enhancing the resilience of communities against disasters and climate change and that the mission took Ms Bayani to countries including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti, Ivory Coast and Sri Lanka.
The statement added that she was also the lead author of several UNEP publications that examined how the regulatory functions of ecosystems could provide a buffer against disasters.
“A conservation biologist by training, however, it was in conserving Iran’s natural heritage and unique species where Ms Bayani’s heart lay, and in 2017 she returned to her home country to work on efforts to conserve the Persian or Asian Cheetah, one of the most endangered large cat species in the world.
“Ms Bayani was arrested in February 2018 along with other internationally, recognised experts in the field of nature conservation,”the agency added. “Our natural world is under tremendous pressure.”
UNEP stated that decades of advancements in poverty alleviation and sustainable development were in danger of being undone by the triple global catastrophe of climate change, nature and biodiversity loss, pollution, and waste.
According to the UN agency, without environmental conservationists, a better future is difficult to create since they are crucial allies in defending the rights of the present and future generations to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment.
Story was adapted from EnviroNews.
