judicial discretion.16 The UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran, Javaid Rehman, (“Special Rapporteur”), described this judicial discretion as “problematic” since the criteria for assessing children’s mental development is undefined and subjective.17 While there are some reports of child offenders having their sentences commuted,18 such reports are rare compared to the estimated number of child offenders executed annually.19 As of July 2019, the Special Rapporteur estimated that 90 individuals sitting on death row were under the age of 18 at the time of their alleged offences.20 Overall, despite legal amendments to reduce death penalties for child offenders and provide opportunity to request a retrial before the Iranian courts, there are still many offenders on death row who committed a crime while under the age of 18 years, whose sentences have not been commuted. Recommendation Status: This recommendation has NOT been implemented. 16 CRC/C/IRN/CO/3-4, paras 35–36 Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran, A/HRC/40/67 (30 January 2019) para 61, https://undocs.org/en/A/HRC/40/67 18 ISNA News, “The death sentence of 6 juvenile offenders was commuted on February 8, 2017” (in Persian): https://www.isna.ir/news/95112014376/ 19 See Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran, https://www.iranrights.org/projects/omidmap 20 Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran, A/74/188 (18 July 2019) para 10, https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N19/222/62/PDF/N1922262.pdf?OpenElement 17 3