Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran
A/HRC/31/69 para 65
Full recommendation:
The Special Rapporteur is encouraged by the willingness of the Islamic Republic of Iran to explore
steps to reduce the number of executions in the country. He reiterates his call on the Government
to declare a moratorium on the use of the death penalty and encourages it to continue its
examination of laws and policies that effectively undermine or violate the right to life. These
include laws that provide for the death penalty for acts not considered to be criminal offences or
crimes that do not warrant use of the death penalty under international law, such as drug-related
crimes. He also appeals to the Government to abandon piecemeal reforms and to immediately and
unconditionally prohibit the execution of offenders who are juveniles, defined as individuals under
18 years of age, at the time they committed the capital offence.
Assessment using Impact Iran human rights indicators1
A. The Special Rapporteur reiterates his call on the Government to declare a
moratorium on the use of the death penalty for acts not considered to be criminal
offences or crimes that do not warrant use of the death penalty under international
law, such as drug-related crimes
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
1
CCPR.6.2.S.1; CCPR.6.5.S.1;
CCPR.6.2.P.1; CCPR.6.5.P.1
CCPR.6.2.O.3; CCPR.6.5.O.1; CCPR.6.5.O.2
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
Ibid.
1