While Iranian law permits the issuance of the death penalty for those under the age of 18, Iran
argues it doesn’t carry out juvenile executions.12 This is because the government of Iran
generally doesn’t carry out the execution while they are juveniles, but rather issues them a
suspended death sentence that is to be carried out after they turn 18. This is contrary to the
ICCPR and CRC as per General Comment 36 of the Human Rights Committee13 and General
Comment 10 of the Committee on the Rights of the Child.14 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”.15 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”.16
Since 1990, Iran has executed more juvenile offenders than any other country in the world, and
the number of juveniles executed by Iran’s judicial forces is more than double the combined total
number of juvenile offenders executed by the remaining nine countries in the list 17 Iranian
authorities executed 5 juvenile offenders (people who were under the age of 18 when committing
a crime) in 2017, 6 in 2018 and 4 in 2019.18 According to Iran Human Rights, Iran was the only
country to carry out juvenile executions in 2020, with at least four executions recorded.19 There
are reports of juvenile offenders having their sentences commuted20, yet these reports are few
compared to the number of juvenile offenders being executed yearly.
Recommendation Status:
This recommendation has NOT been implemented21
12
Iran’s national report for the second cycle of the UPR, 2014: https://documents-ddsny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G14/098/67/PDF/G1409867.pdf?OpenElement
13
General Comment 36 of the ICCPR, p38:
https://tbinternet.ohchr.org/Treaties/CCPR/Shared%20Documents/1_Global/CCPR_C_GC_36_8785_E.pdf
14
General Comment 10 of the CRC, p. 37:
https://tbinternet.ohchr.org/Treaties/CCPR/Shared%20Documents/1_Global/CCPR_C_GC_36_8785_E.pdf
15
See OHCHR News, www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=21547&LangID=E
16
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
17
Amnesty International, “Executions of Juveniles Since 1990 as of November 2019” accessed April 25, 2020,
https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/ACT5002332019ENGLISH.pdf
18
https://iranhr.net/media/files/Rapport_iran-GB.pdf and https://iranhr.net/media/files/Rapport_iran_2019-GB-BD.pdf
19
https://iranhr.net/en/articles/4727/
20
ISNA News -The death sentence of 6 juvenile offenders was commuted on February 8, 2017 (in Persian):
https://www.isna.ir/news/
21
For more, please see: Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran https://www.iranrights.org/projects/omidmap
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