Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran
A/71/418 para 82
Full recommendation
The Special Rapporteur therefore continues to appeal to the authorities to declare a moratorium
on the use of executions for all crimes not considered “most serious” under international law,
and calls on the authorities to consider working with international and national stakeholders
to amend its anti-narcotics laws in line with international human rights conventions to
which the Islamic Republic of Iran is a party. He urges the authorities to reconsider laws
that render acts not considered to be crimes under international law capital offences. He appeals
to the Government to abandon piecemeal reforms and to immediately and unconditionally
prohibit the execution of juvenile offenders, defined as individuals under 18 years of age at the
time they committed a capital offence.
Assessment using Impact Iran human rights indicators1
A. The Special Rapporteur continues to appeal to the authorities to declare a
moratorium on the use of executions for all crimes not considered “most serious”
under international law.
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 Islamic Republic of Iran continues to apply the death penalty 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 to certain cases of
1
CCPR.6.1.S.1; CCPR.6.1.S.2; CCPR.6.6.S.1; CCPR.6.4.S.1; CCPR.6.5.S.1; CCPR.6.1.P.1; CCPR.6.1.P.2; CCPR.6.2.P.2;
CCPR.6.5.P.1; CCPR.6.1.O.1; CCPR.6.2.O.3; 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.html
1