SCE was a follow-up effort to the successful campaign and petition that helped save the life of Nazanin Fatehi, an Iranian teenager sentenced to death for killing her attempted rapist.

Article 6 paragraph 5 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) declares: “Sentence of death shall not be imposed for crimes committed by persons below eighteen years of age”[6] and article 37 paragraph 1 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) provides that: “Neither capital punishment nor life imprisonment without possibility of release shall be imposed for offenses committed by persons below eighteen years of age”.

[8] In the summer of 2006, the Iranian Parliament reportedly passed a bill establishing special courts for children and adolescents.

In October 2008 SCE issued a comprehensive list of solutions to end juvenile executions in Iran.

[15] As of October 2008 SCE had recorded at least 140 juvenile offenders on death row in Iran,[16][17] 3 in Saudi Arabia, 3 in Sudan and 1 in Yemen.