Speaking at the 2025 Second World Summit on Social Development in Doha, Qatar, on Wednesday, Foreign Minister Rabiei said Iran supports South-South cooperation to achieve development goals, and stressed the importance of community-based governance, anti-corruption efforts and effective oversight.
The full statement from Iranian officials is below.
I would like to express my gratitude to the Government of Qatar and the organizers for their efforts in hosting this event.
Social development is a multifaceted issue and requires minimizing poverty, discrimination and inequality. Human dignity, justice and collective welfare must be maintained. Attention must be paid to groups with unequal opportunities, such as immigrants. And the institution of the family must be respected.
We must fairly assess the progress towards achieving social development goals and identify the factors that stand in the way of achieving them. Despite significant progress, we are still falling short of our desired goals in many areas.
Natural disasters, the recent global pandemic, climate change, geopolitical conflicts, and harsh, parochial, unilateral, and discriminatory policies all threaten or reduce the quality of life for millions of people.
Food security remains a serious challenge. One-third of the world’s population, especially women and children in developing countries, suffer from hunger and malnutrition. Overcoming this situation requires a global commitment and concerted investment in sustainable and resilient agricultural systems.
In this connection, I must mention the human catastrophe in Gaza and the occupied territories. There, the occupying regime uses water and food as weapons against the population, taking the lives of thousands of innocent women and children. This act is a clear genocide and a crime against humanity. It is hoped that this summit will unite in condemning this inhumane act and propose a mechanism to prevent it from happening again.
Another major obstacle to social development is the imposition of unjust sanctions that impede a nation’s social development. Sanctions violate fundamental human rights, damage livelihoods, threaten access to medicines and treatment for patients, especially those with serious illnesses, and result in the deaths of innocent people.
It is appropriate for this Summit to condemn such inhumane sanctions and establish mechanisms to prevent actions that endanger public welfare.
The policies of the Islamic Republic of Iran in the field of social development are based on three pillars: promotion of human development, structural social protection, and inclusive employment.
Despite massive sanctions, Iran’s Human Development Index (HDI) rose from 0.626 in 1990 to 0.799 in 2023. Iran is also implementing programs to strengthen social and livelihood resilience to protect its population from economic and climate shocks.
Addressing global challenges requires collective and principled action. We welcome South-South cooperation towards development goals. Community-based governance, anti-corruption and results-oriented oversight are essential.
The summit should propose practical mechanisms to strengthen global social protection in line with the ongoing economic and environmental crisis. We recommend paying special attention to social resilience and the development of policies to strengthen it.
Social development is incompatible with sanctions-based policies. Sanctions undermine human dignity and the social stability of communities and contradict the very purpose of this summit. This conference could send a strong message of rejecting sanctions and establish practical discussions to address the impact on human lives.
In conclusion, I would like to see the emergence of a global discourse in which the suffering of one individual is felt as the suffering of all humanity.
As the great Persian poet Saadi Shirazi expressed it eight centuries ago:
Humans are part of the whole,
In the creation of one essence and soul.
If one of our members is suffering from pain,
Other members will also be worried.
If you can’t sympathize with someone’s pain,
A human name that cannot be kept.
MNA/IRN