The prohibition on the imposition of the death penalty on children is considered to be jus cogens
under international law 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 years old or older at the time of
the offence.14 Executions of child offenders continue to be carried out in the Islamic Republic of
Iran. Four convicted child offenders were reportedly executed in 2019 in the Islamic Republic of
Iran.15
According to data collected by Iran Human Rights (IHR) and international human rights
organisations, the Islamic Republic is responsible for more than 70% of all executions of
juvenile offenders in the last 30 years. IHR’s statistics also show that at least 63 juvenile
offenders have been executed in Iran over the past 10 years, with at least four executed in 2019
and four in 2020. 16There is no readily available information that might indicate the existence of
steps taken by the Government to repeal all laws imposing the death penalty against child
offenders.
The Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran did not prohibit all executions of persons
charged with offences that they committed when under the age of 18.
B. The Special Rapporteur furthers recommends that the Government abolish the
death penalty in all cases and, pending that measure, introduce a moratorium
In its latest General Comment on Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights, the Human Rights Committee explicitly stipulated that the term “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.”17
In the Islamic Republic of Iran, the death penalty continues to be applied 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,18 thus contravening Article 6 of the International Covenant on
14
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
15
ECPM, Iran Human Rights: https://www.ecpm.org/wp-content/uploads/Rapport-iran-2020-gb-070420-WEB.pdf
16
https://iranhr.net/en/articles/4648/
17
UN Human Rights Committee, 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
18
UN Human Rights Committee, 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