effectively removed this type of punishment from legislation. The death penalty is still being
issued and carried out for qisas cases.13
Since 1990, Iran has executed more juvenile offenders than any other country in the world, with
the total of those executed more than doubling the total number of juvenile offenders executed
by countries which constitute the next nine countries that continue to execute minors.14 Iranian
authorities executed 6 juvenile offenders (people who were under the age of 18 when committing
a crime) in 2018, 4 in 2019, and 4 in 2020. 1516 In its January 2020 report, the Special Rapporteur
on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran stated that he received
“information that there are at present at least 100 individuals who have been sentenced to death
for crimes committed when they were under 18 years of age.”17
The prohibition of imposing 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 reasonable doubt, that the accused was older than 18 years old at the time of
the offence.18 Executions of child offenders continue to be conducted in the Islamic Republic of
Iran. There is no readily available information that might indicate the existence of steps taken by
the Government to repeal laws imposing the death penalty against child offenders.
Recommendation Status:
This recommendation has NOT been implemented.
13
Iran Human Rights and ECPM, Annual Report on the Death Penalty in Iran 2019, 34. https://www.iranhr.net/en/reports/22/
Amnesty International, “Executions of Juveniles Since 1990 as of November 2019” accessed April 25, 2020,
https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/ACT5002332019ENGLISH.pdf
15
https://iranhr.net/en/articles/4727/
16
ECPM, Iran Human Rights, https://iranhr.net/media/files/Rapport_iran-GB.pdf and
https://iranhr.net/media/files/Rapport_iran_2019-GB-BD.pdf
17
Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran, January 2020,
https://undocs.org/Home/Mobile?FinalSymbol=A%2FHRC%2F43%2F61&Language=E&DeviceType=Desktop
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
14
3