drawn sharp criticisms from international actors. In June 2015, four United Nations experts whilst urging the Government of Pakistan to halt the execution of juvenile offenders condemned the existence of “several hundred” juvenile offenders on death row as a violation of its international law obligations.11 Similarly, in June 2016 the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child urged the Government of Pakistan to stay the executions of all juvenile offenders and reopen all cases where there was even the slightest indication of the minority of the accused at the time of the commission of the alleged offence.12 Pakistan enacted the Juvenile Justice System Ordinance (JJSO) in 2000 in order to bring its criminal justice system in conformity with its obligations under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. The law prohibits executions of juveniles and makes provisions separate courts, trials and detention centres from judges and lawyers. However, in the 17 years that have passed since the JJSO came into force, it remains virtually ignored in practice. Firstly, the law was enacted without retrospective force – thereby denying its protection to juvenile offenders sentenced to death prior to its enactment in 2000. A Presidential Notification granted a “special remission” for all juvenile offenders whose death sentences were confirmed prior to the JJSO on the basis of an inquiry into their juvenility. However, such inquiries were seldom conducted and when they were the investigation was replete with incompetence, inefficiency and violations of human rights standards. Pakistan has also consistently failed to set up juvenile courts, borstal institutions and provisions for effective legal aid for juveniles as provided under the JJSO. In a context marred with low birth registration and a lack of sensitization of law enforcement and judiciary to juvenile delinquency, a significant number of juvenile offenders fall outside the few institutional safeguards actually implemented in practice. As a result, the juvenile justice system is rarely applied to those it is designed to protect, resulting in a significant number of death sentences being meted out to juvenile offenders. Once sentenced these juvenile offenders are denied effective recourse to appeals and post-conviction reliefs, even in the face of exonerating evidence. All of these aforementioned problems constitute violations of international law and taken together reveals a broken criminal justice system that fails to protect juvenile offenders from the most severe and irreversible form of punishment – the death penalty. This report documents the many ways that Pakistan’s juvenile justice system fails its juvenile offenders and results in the Government of Pakistan’s unlawful and arbitrary implementation of the death penalty against juvenile offenders. The report analyzes individual cases of juvenile offenders, represented by the Justice Project Pakistan, who have been executed or those currently awaiting executions to highlight the many junctures at which violations occur starting from the arrest to the juvenile’s unlawful march to the gallows. The analysis from the individual cases is supplanted by interviews of key stakeholders working with the juvenile justice system in Pakistan, as activists, lawyers, prosecutors, academics, government officials and the judiciary. The violations highlighted in this report compel the conclusion that even though the Government of Pakistan has consistently maintained that no executions of juvenile offenders have taken place, the lack of implementation of protective safeguards and protocols particularly whilst conducting age determination investigations means that See Justice Project Pakistan & Allard K. Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic, A most Serious Crime: Pakistan’s Unlawful Use of the Death Penalty, 2-3, (2016) [hereinafter JPP-Lowenstein, Death Penalty Report] Id. 11 U.N Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights, UN experts urge Pakistan not the execute Juveniles (Mar. 20, 2015), http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=15729&LangID=E The panel included Christof Heyns (the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions), Juan E. Mendez (UN Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment), and Kirsten Sandberg (UN Chairperson on the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child). 12 Concluding Observations of the Comm. On the Rights of the Child: Pakistan, para 24, U.N Doc. CRC/C/PAK/CO/5 (July 2016) 9 10 DEATH ROW’S CHILDREN 10