A/HRC/11/2 page 9 26. Perhaps unsurprisingly, none of the three reports submitted by the Secretary-General to the Council at its fourth, seventh and tenth sessions has generated any debate among Member States. While a few Governments have made statements in relation to specific incidents, the reporting process has not served the original purpose of bringing greater attention to the relevant problems and providing an occasion for the Council to take action. It is therefore essential that the Council and other stakeholders address this issue with urgency. Recommendations to this effect are proposed at the end of the present report. B. Upholding the prohibition against the execution of juvenile offenders 27. The prohibition against executing juvenile offenders (those who were under the age of 18 at the time of committing the relevant crime) is one of the clearest and most important of international human rights standards. It is unequivocal and admits of no exception. There is not a single Member State of the United Nations that is not a party to one of the two international treaties enshrining this norm: the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Yet juvenile offenders continue to be sentenced to death, as evidenced by many such reports I have brought to the attention of the Governments concerned in recent years. 28. In its resolution 10/2, the Council urged States to ensure that capital punishment is not imposed for offences committed by persons under 18 years of age, and called on relevant special procedures of the Council to give special attention to such questions and to provide, wherever appropriate, specific recommendations in that regard. 29. I therefore wish to draw the Council’s attention to the situation in relation to the juvenile death penalty, especially as reflected in the communications sent to Governments in the last two years.10 During that period, I have addressed 33 communications to five Governments11 regarding allegations that the death penalty has been imposed for a crime committed by a minor, or that the execution of a juvenile offender was imminent or had been carried out. The communications concerned 46 juvenile offenders, four of them female, the remainder male.12 In six cases, it was alleged that the juvenile offender had been executed.13 In the remaining cases, urgent appeals were sent in situations where reports indicated the risk of the execution of a 10 See A/HRC/8/3/Add.1 and A/HRC/11/2/Add.1. 11 Those of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Saudi Arabia and the Sudan. A recent Human Rights Watch report on the theme “The last holdouts: ending the juvenile death penalty in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Pakistan and Yemen” (http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2008/09/10/last-holdouts) includes Yemen but not Papua New Guinea. 12 The breakdown by country is Iran (Islamic Republic of): 24 communications concerning 30 juvenile offenders; the Sudan: 4 communications concerning 10 offenders; Saudi Arabia: 3 communications concerning 4 offenders; Papua New Guinea and Pakistan: each one communication concerning one offender. 13 See in A/HRC/11/2/Add.1.