A/HRC/4/20 page 18 IV. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 63. The prohibition of the execution of those who were under 18 at the time of committing a crime is of fundamental importance to international human rights law. The Islamic Republic of Iran is the only country in the world in relation to which I continue to receive significant numbers of credible reports of such sentences being imposed and, in some cases, carried out on juveniles. Iran is a party to two treaties which explicitly outlaw this practice. My repeated requests over several years to visit Iran in order to ascertain the accuracy of these reports and to explore through dialogue ways in which to remedy any shortcomings have yielded no response. This is despite the fact that a “standing invitation” has been issued. This is now a matter in relation to which the Council will need to respond appropriately. 64. International human rights law and international humanitarian law are complementary bodies of law. Suggestions that the extrajudicial executions mandate and, much more importantly, the Human Rights Council as a whole are excluded from inquiring into possible violations of human rights or humanitarian law committed in any context in which an armed conflict may or may not be occurring would dramatically reduce the relevance of the Council and would eliminate all public scrutiny under international law for such violations. The Council should uphold and continue its very long-established practice - dating back almost a quarter of a century in the case of this mandate alone - of scrutinizing alleged violations of both human rights and humanitarian law, even if committed in the context of an armed conflict. 65. The death penalty must, under international law, only be applied for the most serious crimes. This standard, like all others in international human rights law, cannot be interpreted subjectively by each individual country without making a mockery of the basic principle. Over the past two decades international jurisprudence from a wide range of sources has succeeded in bringing clarity to the question of which crimes can legitimately be classified as being the “most serious”. As a result, the death penalty can only be imposed in cases where it can be shown that there was an intention to kill which resulted in the loss of life. 66. Making the death penalty mandatory for certain crimes, in such a way that a judge is prohibited from taking the circumstances of an individual accused person into account in sentencing, is illegal under international human rights law. This is not to say that countries which retain the death penalty are unable to apply that penalty in the majority of cases involving a most serious crime, but they are obligated to at least provide for the possibility that a judge might find a death sentence impermissible in a particular individual's case because of extenuating circumstances of one kind or another.