choose whether to seek medical advice or not”. 13 In recent years, reports indicate that courts have been selective in applying Article 91 and its note.14 There were cases where, despite forensic reports confirming that the defendant was not “fully mature” at the time of the crime, the judge decided that the accused individual(s) were mature and the language of Article 91 did not apply to them, as they had previously been charged for criminal activities (e.g., robbery). In general, the current Iranian legal framework permits the issuance of the death penalty for those under the age of 18, and the reforms introduced by the Islamic Penal Code have not effectively removed this type of punishment from legislation. The death penalty is still being issued and carried out for qisas cases.15 Since 1990, Iran has executed more juvenile offenders than any other country in the world. The total number of juveniles executed in Iran more than doubles that of the next nine countries who also execute minors.16 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. 17 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.”18 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.19 Executions of child offenders continue to be performed 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. The Islamic Republic of Iran has not suspended the executions reportedly already scheduled or expeditiously lifted or commuted the death sentence of all other persons awaiting execution for offences committed before they reached age 18. 13Report 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 14 Amnesty International, https://www.amnestyusa.org/press-releases/irans-hypocrisy-exposed-as-scores-of-juvenile-offenderscondemned-to-gallows/ 15 Iran Human Rights and ECPM, Annual Report on the Death Penalty in Iran 2019, 34. https://www.iranhr.net/en/reports/22/ 16 Amnesty International, “Executions of Juveniles Since 1990 as of November 2019” accessed April 25, 2020, https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/ACT5002332019ENGLISH.pdf 17 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 18 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 19 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