A/HRC/25/33 prohibits the execution of pregnant women. In addition to these limitations, States that used the death penalty also needed to consider how to address the consequences of its use on society at large, in particular on the families of individuals sentenced to death or executed. 6. The Deputy High Commissioner noted that, in its resolution 22/11, the Human Rights Council expressed deep concern regarding the negative impact of the imposition and carrying out of the death penalty on the human rights of children of parents sentenced to death or executed, and urged States to provide those children with the protection and assistance they required. The Deputy High Commissioner further stated that existing research suggested a number of negative short- and long-term effects on children whose parents were sentenced to death or executed, including infringement of the enjoyment of a range of rights and obligations set out in the Convention on the Rights of the Child. These included, in particular: the obligation to ensure that the best interests of the child are duly taken into account and protected (art. 3); the right to be free from violence, in particular mental violence (art. 19); the right to special protection and assistance by the State action when a child was deprived of his or her family environment (art. 20) and the right to a standard of living adequate for a child’s physical, mental, spiritual, moral and social development (art. 27, para. 1). 7. The Deputy High Commissioner highlighted research suggesting that the execution of a parent could affect a child’s health in a number of ways, including emotional trauma leading to long-term damage to mental health. She also noted that children of parents who were sentenced to death might suffer discrimination, especially where the parent’s offence was publicly known, including through media exposure. Evidence also showed that the death penalty disproportionately affected the poor and certain racial, ethnic and religious minorities. Thus, a child could feel discrimination on grounds of race, religion or economic condition, as well as owing to the stigma due to the death sentence faced by their parents. In some cases, convicted inmates were not informed of their forthcoming execution, nor were their families and lawyers, and bodies of the executed inmates were not returned to the families. In that regard, the Deputy High Commissioner highlighted the conclusion of Human Rights Committee that the failure to inform family members of upcoming executions was incompatible with article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and constituted inhumane or cruel treatment.1 Such secrecy also violated the right of the child to information regarding sentencing of their parents under article 9, paragraph 4, of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. 8. In her statement, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Violence against Children stated that, to date, children of parents sentenced to the death penalty had been invisible in statistics, and in policies and programmes. Referring to studies made by the Quaker United Nations Office and other organizations, she noted that a majority of those children came from disadvantaged families who had been experiencing considerable hardship long before a parent had been sentenced to death or executed. She said that the impact of that cruel and inhuman treatment on family members could not be denied; and, in the case of children, it gained an ever growing dimension. Those children experienced fear and a deep sense of insecurity as they lived under the constant threat that their parent, whom they loved most in the world, could be executed at any moment. The loss of a parent was irreversible but, unlike a natural death, when it resulted from the action of the authorities of a country, it became particularly confusing and frightening for the child. Traumatized, with low self-esteem, feeling ashamed and at times the victim of stigmatization and humiliation, it became very difficult for those children to explain their 1 4 Communication No. 887/1999, Staselovich v. Belarus, Views adopted on 3 April 2003, Official Records of the General Assembly, Fifty-eighth Session, Supplement No. 40, vol. II (A/58/40 (Vol. II)).