Background Information
As a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), Iran has entered into diplomatic commitments not to execute persons for offences committed when they were under 18. Nevertheless, since 1990, Iran has executed at least 18 people for crimes committed when they were juveniles. In 2005 alone, despite being urged in the January by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child to suspend the practice immediately, at least eight juvenile offenders were executed, including two who were still under 18 at the time of their execution. Before Darabi's, the last recorded execution of a juvenile offender, Rostam Tajik, was on 10 December 2005.
On 9 December, Philip Alston, the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, stated: "At a time when virtually every other country in the world has firmly and clearly renounced the execution of people for crimes they committed as children, the Iranian approach is particularly unacceptable... it is all the more surprising because the obligation to refrain from such executions is not only clear and incontrovertible, but the Government of Iran has itself stated that it will cease this practice."
According to the penal code of the Islamic Republic of Iran, children are considered criminally responsible for their actions as adults at the age of puberty. Pursuant to Article 1210, Addendum 1, girls reach the age of puberty 6 years before their male counterparts, at age of 9. Boys, on the other hand, are not legally considered to have reached the maturity that would make them responsible for their actions, such as murder, until the age of 15.
Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International say Iran executes the most juvenile offenders of any country, in breach of the UN Convention, which forbids the death penalty for crimes committed under the age of 18. Lawyers estimate 130 prisoners are on death row in Iran for murders committed as minors.
Read more about this topic: Delara Darabi
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