In cases regarding qisas, the pardon or commutation of the sentence is based solely on the
request of the victim or the victim’s guardian. This deprives the child defendant of his or her
right to seek pardon or commutation of the sentence by the State.6 There are a number of
institutions that can intervene in order to mediate cases of children sentenced through qisas. This
mediation is notably used to convert qisas 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. 7 There is no readily available information that would
indicate the number of cases received, reviewed and adjudicated by these institutions.
The prohibition on the imposition of the death penalty on children is widely 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 or older at the time of
the offence.8 Executions of child offenders continue to be conducted in the Islamic Republic of
Iran.
Iranian authorities executed 6 juvenile offenders in 2018, 4 in 2019 and 4 in 2020.9
There 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.
B. The Special Rapporteur further urges the Government to undertake a special
review of the cases of persons on death row for crimes committed when they were
under the age of 18, with a view to commuting or quashing their death sentences
altogether.
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 appropriate in order to establish the full mental
development [of the accused]”. In 2017, a number of UN special procedure mandate holders
6
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
7
Ibid.
8
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
9
https://iranhr.net/en/articles/4727/
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/
2