Amnesty International: Two-thirds of executions of minors worldwide have been carried out by the Islamic Republic
Amnesty International reported that Iran alone has been responsible for 97 executions of children under 18 years of age since 1990, accounting for two-thirds of all such executions worldwide.
According to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which Iran is also a party to, capital punishment should not be carried out against persons under 18 years of age, as children, for any crime.
Amnesty International reported on Tuesday, April 23, that since 1990 it has documented the execution of 145 juvenile convicts in ten countries, including Iran. The remaining countries that have carried out executions of juvenile convicts are: China, Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, South Sudan, the United States, and Yemen.
According to this human rights organization, the use of capital punishment against those who were under 18 years of age at the time of the crime is a grave violation of international human rights law, and the absolute prohibition on the implementation of capital punishment for juvenile offenders is considered, like the prohibition of torture and slavery, to be a peremptory norm of international law. This means that even if a country is not a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights or the Convention on the Rights of the Child, it is still obligated under customary international law to refrain from imposing the death penalty on individuals who were under 18 years of age at the time the crime was committed.
According to this report, in 2018 Iran was the only country in the world that executed individuals who were under 18 years of age at the time the crime was committed. That year, at least seven juvenile convicts named Amir Hossein Pourjafar, Ali Kazemi, Abolfazl Chazani Shirahi, Abolfazl Naderi, Mahboubeh Mofidi, Zeinab Sekanvand, and Omid Rostami were executed.
Amnesty International, in February 2019, issued a statement calling for the immediate halt of execution orders for three juvenile offenders named Mohammad Kalhoor, Borzan Nasrallahzadeh, and Shayan Saeidpour, who were under 18 years of age at the time the crime was committed.
Amnesty International has documented the cases of 90 individuals who were under 18 years of age at the time the crime was committed and are currently on death row in Iran. However, the actual number is believed to be higher.
Previously, Amnesty International reported on April 10 that the rate of execution worldwide declined in 2018, but one-third of the “documented executions globally” that year, totaling 253 cases, were carried out in Iran.
Source: Voice of America
