UN official: Iran should stop executing children

Iran should immediately halt the execution of children, the UN’s top human rights official said today.

Louise Arbour, the UN high commissioner for human rights, said she met with Iranian officials during a visit to Tehran earlier this month and urged them to impose a moratorium on the execution of minors.

“Even if the legislation in the books appears to permit the imposition of the death penalty on minors … it would be imperative that they not be executed,” she told journalists in Geneva.

Iran is one of the few countries in the world which executes minors, in violation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Yesterday Iranian media reported that a 16-year-old was among two teenagers sentenced to death for raping and killing two young boys earlier this year.

Arbour said she opposed the death penalty in principle, but that countries who continue to apply it should at least abide by international law, which prohibits the execution of children.