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Excesses of the penal system

The latest call by the Human Rights Watch for a universal ban on the death penalty for juvenile crimes assumes significance in the context of the 2007 United Nations General Assembly’s resolution urging governments to clamp a moratorium on all executions, pending abolition of capital punishment. The question of excluding crimes committed as children from the application of this barbaric and brutal punishment is intertwined with the larger issue of the evolution of modern liberal democratic institutions and value systems. According to the New York-based organisation, five states (mostly in West Asia) have witnessed a total of 30 juvenile crime related executions since 2005,despite their obligations as state-parties under the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. If unconscionable delays in the conduct of trials eroded what little scope there is for dispensing justice in keeping with democratic norms, the absence of a reliable system for registering births — a phenomenon common in developing countries — undermines the prospect of securing compliance with the 18-year age limit.

Although in the United States the death penalty is legal in a number of states, the Supreme Court ruled in 2005 against its application for offences committed as children as violative of the Constitution. Similar provisions codified in China and Pakistan represent some advance in the effort to humanise penal procedures. States where there are no legal prohibition on the death penalty for juveniles should decisively move to enact such a law and, until that happens, enforce a moratorium. Such steps would be in conformity with the growing recognition of the guarantees of fundamental protections for children, besides being in accord with the global trend towards a more humane and democratic mode of delivery of justice.

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