A/HRC/30/31 63. On 3 February 2015, two journalists employed by a satellite channel were detained by members of the Popular Committees while covering events at Sana’a University. Both were reportedly transferred to the 14th police station in Sana’a and held for three days before being released without charges against them. D. Death penalty 64. Yemen has not ratified the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights on the abolition of the death penalty. National legislation imposes the death penalty for a wide range of offences,14 including financial crimes, blasphemy, offences committed under Hodoud (religiously ordained crimes) and Qisas (death in retribution) and drug-related offences. The Penal Law also maintains death by stoning for extramarital heterosexual and consensual adult homosexual intercourse.15 65. While the Penal Law prohibits the death penalty for minors, courts still hand down death sentences to minors or adults found guilty of committing crimes when they were under the age of 18 years. The practice is attributed to, among other factors, the difficulty in determining the age of offenders in the absence of birth certificates. 66. Yemen has not established a moratorium on the use of the death penalty. Despite repeated requests by OHCHR, the Attorney General did not provide figures on the number of individuals on death row or who have been executed during the period under review. The imposition of the death penalty for any but the most serious crimes, or for persons under the age of 18 years at the time of commission of the crime, is a contravention of international law. In addition, death by stoning amounts to cruel and inhuman punishment. Children’s rights E. 67. The overall situation of children in Yemen has significantly deteriorated since the intensification of the conflict, particularly since March 2015. The United Nations country task force on monitoring and reporting documented that 74 children were killed and 242 injured between 26 March and 11 June 2015. 68. Furthermore, as noted above, attacks affecting schools in the context of hostilities have endangered children’s safety and restricted their right to education. OHCHR also found that there had been a significant increase in child abductions, with at least 81 documented cases of children abducted by different groups between January and March 2015, as against only two documented incidents in the last three months of 2014. 69. The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) informed OHCHR that the recruitment and use of children in conflict rose sharply during the period under review. Trained monitors and United Nations staff members documented numerous cases of children manning checkpoints or being used by armed groups in the context of hostilities. In 2014, 157 cases of children allegedly being used for military purposes were documented. In the month and a half following the start of the aerial bombardments on 26 March 2015, 318 instances of children seen carrying weapons at checkpoints and elsewhere were 14 15 A total of 315 offences are punishable by the death penalty under four main laws: the Penal Law (1994), the law on combating kidnapping (1998), the military Penal Code (1998) and the law on combating trafficking and the illicit use of drugs and psychotropic substances (1993). A draft law on combating human trafficking would introduce another offence punishable by death. According to international human rights jurisprudence, these crimes do not meet the threshold of “most serious crimes” and should not be punishable by death (see A/HRC/27/23, paras. 28–39). 13