Yemeni President Abdo Rabbo Mansour Hadi

YEMEN: EU DELEGATION WELCOMES DECISION IN REGARDS TO JUVENILE OFFENDERS

October 11, 2013: European officials and UNICEF welcomed Yemen’s decision to not carry out the death penalty against juvenile offenders, in keeping with international regulations.
The use of the death penalty for crimes committed by people younger than 18 is prohibited under international human rights law.
On December 3, 2012, a government firing squad in Sana’a executed Hind al-Barti, a young woman convicted of murder whose birth certificate indicated she was 15 at the time of her alleged crime. Rights organizations, among which Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch called on President Abdo Rabbo Mansour Hadi to immediately put an end to such practice.
“President Hadi should break with Yemen’s past of arbitrary justice and state-sanctioned violence by reversing the execution orders of the three young men with signed execution decrees,” said Priyanka Motaparthy, children’s rights researcher at Human Rights Watch in March 2013.
She added, “Ending executions of juvenile offenders is a clear and straightforward way for Yemen’s government to show it honors its human rights commitments.”
As it happens, President chose to reform Yemen’s judicial system to ensure that all alleged juvenile offenders are appropriately identified and thus processed in accordance to the law.
In a joint statement UNICEF and the EU delegation in Yemen noted, “The European Union Delegation in Yemen and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) Country Office would like to seize the opportunity of the World and European Day against the Death Penalty to mark their appreciation at the recent efforts led by the Yemeni authorities to put an end to Juvenile Death Penalty in Yemen.”
Moreover, “We welcome in particular the establishment by the Ministry of Justice of a Specialised Forensic Committee aimed at reviewing all cases where there is a doubt on the age of the alleged offender. We are also encouraged by the recent decision by President Abdo Rabbo Mansour Hadi to request the Supreme Judicial Council to re-open three death penalty cases for alleged juvenile offenders”. (Sources: Yemen Post, 11/10/2013)