Capital Punishment and Minors, Women, Retarded, and the Innocent :: Argumentative Persuasive Essays

This essay takes the exceptions to the rule, the classes of people who are not ordinarily sentenced to death, and expsoses how they are impacted by the death penalty. Child offenders are people convicted of committing crimes when they were under the age of 18. International human rights treaties prohibit anyone under 18 years of age at the time of the crime being sentenced to death. The ICCPR, the ACHR and the CRC all have provisions to this effect. One hundred and fifteen countries whose laws still provide for the death penalty either have provisions in their laws which exclude the death penalty against child offenders, or may be presumed to exclude such use by virtue of becoming parties to the above treaties without entering a reservation to the relevant article of those treaties. The UN Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, at its annual meeting in August in Geneva, passed a resolution condemning the imposition and execution of the death penalty on those aged under 18 at the time of the commission of the offence. At the Asia Pacific Forum of Human Rights Institutions, meeting in Rotorua, New Zealand in August, the Advisory Council of Jurists, which is one of the bodies reporting to the above Forum, considered the death penalty, one of two issues referred to it by the Forum. In its final report issued in December the Council said that it ''......accepts as a minimum the restrictions placed on the categories of persons that can be executed as set out int the ICCPR namely persons who commit an offence while below eighteen years of age........ .....The Council emphasizes that the persons who commit offences when below the age of 18 are not to be executed under the terms of the ICCPR and Convention on the rights of the Child.'' Representatives on the Advisory Council of Jurists came from Australia, Fiji, India, Indonesia, New Zealand, the Philippines and Sri Lanka. Nepal had not at that time nominated its representative to the Council. Pakistan: The government of Pakistan on 1 July 2000 issued the Juvenile Justice System Ordinance 2000 which prohibits the death penalty for anyone aged below 18 at the time of the alleged offence. This comes exactly 10 years after Pakistan ratified the UNCRC which makes it obligatory for states parties to ban the death penalty for juvenile offenders in domestic legislation. Capital Punishment and Minors, Women, Retarded, and the Innocent :: Argumentative Persuasive Essays This essay takes the exceptions to the rule, the classes of people who are not ordinarily sentenced to death, and expsoses how they are impacted by the death penalty. Child offenders are people convicted of committing crimes when they were under the age of 18. International human rights treaties prohibit anyone under 18 years of age at the time of the crime being sentenced to death. The ICCPR, the ACHR and the CRC all have provisions to this effect. One hundred and fifteen countries whose laws still provide for the death penalty either have provisions in their laws which exclude the death penalty against child offenders, or may be presumed to exclude such use by virtue of becoming parties to the above treaties without entering a reservation to the relevant article of those treaties. The UN Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, at its annual meeting in August in Geneva, passed a resolution condemning the imposition and execution of the death penalty on those aged under 18 at the time of the commission of the offence. At the Asia Pacific Forum of Human Rights Institutions, meeting in Rotorua, New Zealand in August, the Advisory Council of Jurists, which is one of the bodies reporting to the above Forum, considered the death penalty, one of two issues referred to it by the Forum. In its final report issued in December the Council said that it ''......accepts as a minimum the restrictions placed on the categories of persons that can be executed as set out int the ICCPR namely persons who commit an offence while below eighteen years of age........ .....The Council emphasizes that the persons who commit offences when below the age of 18 are not to be executed under the terms of the ICCPR and Convention on the rights of the Child.'' Representatives on the Advisory Council of Jurists came from Australia, Fiji, India, Indonesia, New Zealand, the Philippines and Sri Lanka. Nepal had not at that time nominated its representative to the Council. Pakistan: The government of Pakistan on 1 July 2000 issued the Juvenile Justice System Ordinance 2000 which prohibits the death penalty for anyone aged below 18 at the time of the alleged offence. This comes exactly 10 years after Pakistan ratified the UNCRC which makes it obligatory for states parties to ban the death penalty for juvenile offenders in domestic legislation.