The Maldives must immediately put a stop to plans to resume executions for the first time in 60 years, Amnesty International said today.

The country’s Home Minister Umar Naseer yesterday ordered prisons in the Maldives to start making “all necessary arrangements” for the implementation of all death sentences through lethal injection.
Abbas Faiz, Amnesty International’s Maldives Researcher, said:

“The government’s order is surprising and extremely disappointing.
“The Maldives should put an immediate end to such plans now.”

 
While the Maldives legally retains the death penalty, the country has not carried out an execution since 1954. There are currently 19 prisoners on death row

In 2006 the Maldives became a State Party to the UN’s International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, a key international treaty which sets the abolition of the death penalty as the goal for countries that still retain it. Resuming executions clearly goes directly against that purpose.
 
The Maldives Home Minister also condoned the practice of people being sentenced to death and executed for crimes committed when they were below 18 years of age. The imposition of the death penalty against juvenile offenders violates international law and the Maldives’ own international obligations.