Hengaw report: Three-month-old baby sold in Kermanshah amid extreme poverty
Hengaw – Saturday, October 18, 2025
A three-month-old baby has been sold by their parents in Kermanshah (Kermashan) for 250 million tomans (approximately USD 4,000) due to extreme poverty and their inability to meet basic living expenses.
According to information received by the Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, the infant — whose identity remains confidential — was sold in recent weeks after the parents posted an advertisement on the Iranian online marketplace “Divar” offering their baby for sale.
The child’s parents, originally from rural areas near Eslamabad-e Gharb (Shabad) and currently residing in Kermanshah, made the decision out of desperation caused by severe economic hardship. The purchasing family, also from Kermanshah, sought to buy the child due to infertility.
Sources informed Hengaw that the transaction took place without any oversight from state welfare or judicial authorities, and no immediate investigation or official response has followed.
The sale of infants has become an increasingly alarming phenomenon in Iran in recent years, driven by widespread poverty, economic stagnation, and the absence of effective social protection mechanisms for vulnerable families. Reports from cities such as Mashhad, Tehran, and Ahvaz indicate that the practice is spreading across the country, turning into a growing social crisis.
Despite repeated warnings from experts and public acknowledgment by the State Welfare Organization that infant sales constitute human trafficking, the Iranian authorities have failed to take effective or humane measures. Instead, they have suppressed civil society organizations and arrested child rights activists, exacerbating the crisis.
Hengaw emphasizes that such acts represent a clear violation of Iran’s international obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and its Optional Protocol on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution, and Child Pornography, ratified by Iran in 1993.
The organization warns that the continuation of such conditions gravely endangers the safety, dignity, and future of children in Iran, and calls on international human rights and child protection bodies to take urgent action to monitor and respond to the systematic violations of children’s rights in the country.
