sentences into diya sentences (blood money). These institutions include a reconciliation
commission, a working group tasked to support mediation with the victim’s next of kin, conflict
resolution council branches and the Women and Children and Protection Office of the Judiciary. 8
There is no readily available information that would indicate the number of cases received,
reviewed and adjudicated by these institutions and they are simply mediators with no formalised
powers.
The prohibition on the imposition of the death penalty on children is widely considered to be jus
cogens (a fundamental principle of international law that binds all states) and represents a violation
of Articles 6(5) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and 37(a) of the
Convention on the Rights of the Child. The Human Rights Committee has explicitly stipulated that
the death penalty cannot be imposed if it cannot be proven, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the
accused was 18 or older at the time of the offence.9 Executions of child offenders continue to be
conducted in the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Article 91 of the Islamic Penal Code, revised in 2013, allows judges to pronounce alternative
sentences in circumstances where the juveniles “do not realise the nature of the crime committed
or its prohibition, or if there is uncertainty about their full mental development, according to their
age”.10 The Article further adds that “the court may ask for the opinion of forensic medicine or
resort to any other method that it sees as appropriate in order to establish the full mental
development [of the accused]”. In 2017, a number of UN special procedure mandate holders
considered the ongoing executions of child offenders in the Islamic Republic of Iran as “conclusive
proof of the failure of the 2013 amendments to stop the execution of individuals sentenced to death
as children”.11 In 2019, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Islamic
Republic of Iran found that the aforementioned assessment of the mental development of the
accused at the time of the offence was “arbitrary and inconsistent, and at the sole discretion of the
judge, who can choose whether to seek medical advice or not”.12
Over the years, several executions of child offenders have been commuted in Iran, however, these
reports are rare.13 In the January 2020 report, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human
rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran wrote that “he continues to monitor the situation of child
offenders on death row, and has received information that there are at present at least 100
8
Ibid.
UN Human Rights Committee (HRC), General comment no. 36, Article 6 (Right to Life), 3 September
2019, CCPR/C/GC/35, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5e5e75e04.html
10
Article 91, Islamic Penal Code (2013), English translation, Iran Human Rights Documentation Center,
https://iranhrdc.org/english-translation-of-books-i-ii-of-the-new-islamic-penal-code/
11
See OHCHR News, www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=21547&LangID=E
12
Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran, January 2019,
https://undocs.org/Home/Mobile?FinalSymbol=A%2FHRC%2F40%2F67&Language=E&DeviceType=Desktop
13
For more, please see: Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran https://www.iranrights.org/projects/omidmap
9
2