Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions A/HRC/14/24/Add.1
para 413
Full recommendation
I would respectfully reiterate my appeal to the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran to
take all necessary steps to avoid executions that would be inconsistent with accepted standards
of international human rights law and to take steps to bring its legislation in compliance with
Article 37(a) of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and Article 6 of the International
Covenant on Civil and Political, to which it is a party.
Assessment using Impact Iran human rights indicators1
A. Take steps to bring its legislation in compliance with Article 6 of the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
There is currently no standing moratorium on the death penalty in Iran.
In its latest General Comment on Article 6, the Human Rights Committee explicitly stipulated
that the term “the most serious crimes” must “be read restrictively and appertain only to crimes
of extreme gravity, involving intentional killing. Crimes not resulting directly and intentionally
in death […], although serious in nature, can never serve as the basis, within the framework of
Article 6, for the imposition of the death penalty. In the same vein, a limited degree of
involvement or of complicity in the commission of even the most serious crimes, […], cannot
justify the imposition of the death penalty.”2
The death penalty continues to be applied in the Islamic Republic of Iran to a wide range of
offences that do not meet the threshold of “most serious crimes”, in other words, crimes that do
not involve intentional killing, in contravention with article 6 of the International Covenant on
Civil and Political Rights. 3 For example, the death penalty may be applied in some cases of
adultery,4 for certain cases of consensual same-sex intercourse between men5 or for vaguely
1
CCPR.6.1.S.1; CCPR.6.5.S.1; CRC.37.1.S.2
CCPR.6.2.P.1; CCPR.6.5.P.1
CCPR.6.2.O.2; CCPR.6.5.O.1
2
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
3
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.htm
4
Islamic Penal Code (2013), Articles 136 and 225, English translation, Iran Human Rights Documentation Center,
https://iranhrdc.org/english-translation-of-books-i-ii-of-the-new-islamic-penal-code/
5
Islamic Penal Code (2013), Article 235, English translation, Iran Human Rights Documentation Center,
https://iranhrdc.org/english-translation-of-books-i-ii-of-the-new-islamic-penal-code/
1