NEW YORK: Five countries, led by Iran, account for all executions of children in the world, Human Rights Watch said on Wednesday, urging an end to the practice.
Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Yemen are the only countries that continue to impose the death penalty on people younger than 18 when they committed a crime. The United States outlawed execution of juvenile offenders in 2005.
The New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) urged the United Nations, which holds its annual General Assembly next week, to pressure for greater protections for children.
'We are only five states away from a complete ban on the juvenile death penalty,' said HRW's Clarisa Bencomo. 'These few holdouts should abandon this barbaric practice so that no one ever again is executed for a crime committed as a child.' All states have ratified or acceded to treaties ensuring that children are not sentenced to death, HRW said, but the five in question allow the punishment in certain cases.
According to the HRW website, in Pakistan, the Juvenile Justice System Ordinance of 2000 bans the death penalty for crimes committed by persons under 18 at the time of the offense, but authorities have yet to implement it in all territories. With only 29.5 percent of births registered, juvenile offenders can find it impossible to convince a judge they were children at the time of the crime. Pakistan executed one such juvenile offender, Mutabar Khan, on June 13, 2006.
According to AFP, Iran executed 26 of the 32 juveniles put to death since January 2005. Iranian law allows such penalties for girls of at least nine and boys of 15 or older, the report said. Six juvenile offenders have been executed there this year, the report said.
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