A/HRC/18/20 crimes” 21- such as economic crimes, sorcery, apostasy and drug-related offences22 or sexual relations between consenting adults. 25. Reports also indicate that various methods of execution, including beheading, electrocution, hanging, lethal injection, shooting or stoning were used during the reporting period.23 Public executions were reportedly carried out in some States,24 while in other States, death-row inmates were not informed of their forthcoming execution, nor were their families or lawyers.25 26. In some cases, lethal chemicals or equipment were reportedly traded from abolitionist States to retentionist States and used for the implementation of the death penalty. In January 2011, 13 civil society organizations signed an appeal to the European Commission to control the exportation, from Europe, of the drugs that are used in executions in the United States.26 The submission seeks to add sodium thiopental to annex III of Council Regulation (EC) No. 1236/2005, which imposes restrictions and controls on trade in certain goods which could be used for capital punishment, torture, or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. In April 2011, 14 member States of the European Union, including Spain, urged the European Union to impose an export ban on a drug used for lethal injections in several states of the United States.27 27. The application of the death penalty for drug offences remains one of the major challenges. Harm Reduction International reported that in 2010 there were 32 countries or territories that prescribed the death penalty for drug-related offences; and hundreds of people were known to have been executed for drug-related offences. According to various sources, more than 150 people were executed for drug offences in the Islamic Republic of Iran in 2010. In China, at least 59 people were executed in the week around 26 June 2010 to mark the International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking, added to an unknown number of people who have been put to death for drug-related offences throughout the year. Saudi Arabia is known to have beheaded one person for smuggling hashish. In 2010, death sentences for drug-related offences were also passed in Egypt, Kuwait, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Malaysia, Pakistan, Singapore, United Arab Emirates and Viet Nam, as well as in Taiwan Province of China. Reportedly, at least 58 drug offenders are on death row in Indonesia and 339 (including 68 women) in Thailand. 28. During the reporting period several countries, including the Islamic Republic of Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Yemen, imposed death sentences against offenders who were under 18 years of age at the time of the offense.28 According to a report by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) published in 2011, 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 Amnesty International, Death Sentences (note 6 above), p. 3. See also www.deathpenaltyworldwide.org/most-serious-crimes.cfm. See para. 27 below for further information on the application of the death penalty for drug-related offences. Amnesty International, Death Sentences, p. 6. Ibid., p. 30. See also A/HRC/16/75, para. 16, and Hands Off Cain, draft report (note 18 above), pp. 89 and 24. Amnesty International, Death Sentences, p. 6. Submission to the European Commission on amending Council Regulation (EC) No. 1236/2005 to include drugs used in the ‘automatic drug injection systems for the purpose of execution of human beings by the administration of a lethal chemical substance’. Available from www.penalreform.org/ files/Joint_NGO_Submission_on_EU_Torture_Reg_sodium_thiopental%5B1%5D.doc Note verbale of Spain, dated 28 April 2011. Amnesty International, Death Sentences (note 6 above), p. 13; Hands Off Cain (note 18 above), pp. 7 and 17. See also paras. 41-42 below for a discussion on the Committee on the Rights of the Child and the death penalty. 7