Amnesty International: Two-thirds of executions of people under 18 worldwide were carried out by the Islamic Republic
Amnesty International announced in a report that Iran alone has been responsible for 97 executions of children under the age of 18 in the world since 1990, equivalent to two-thirds of all such executions.
According to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which Iran is a party, the death penalty should not be imposed on children under the age of 18 for crimes.
Amnesty International reported on Tuesday, May 23, that it has recorded the execution of 145 juvenile offenders in ten countries, including Iran, since 1990. The remaining countries that have executed juvenile offenders include: China, the Republic of Congo, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, South Sudan, the United States, and Yemen.
According to the human rights organization, the use of the death penalty against those who were under 18 at the time of the crime is a gross violation of international human rights law, and the absolute prohibition of the death penalty against juvenile offenders, like the prohibition of torture and the prohibition of slavery, is considered 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 obliged under customary international law to refrain from imposing the death penalty on those who were under 18 at the time of the crime.
According to the report, in 2018, Iran was the only country in the world to execute people who were under the age of 18 at the time of the crime. This year, at least seven juvenile convicts were executed: Amirhossein Pourjafar, Ali Kazemi, Abolfazl Chezani Sherahi, Abolfazl Naderi, Mahboobeh Mofidi, Zeinab Sekanvand, and Omid Rostami.
In March 2018, Amnesty International issued a statement calling for an immediate halt to the execution of three child criminals, Mohammad Kalhor, Barzan Nasrollahzadeh, and Shayan Saeedpour, who were under 18 years of age at the time of the crime.
Amnesty International has documented 90 cases of people who were under 18 at the time of the crime and are currently on death row in Iran, although the actual number is likely higher.
Earlier, Amnesty International announced in a report on April 11 that the global death penalty execution rate had decreased in 2018, but one-third of the "executions recorded globally" this year, a total of 253, were carried out in Iran.
Source: Voice of America
