We are looking to build a case law database on the issue of inhuman sentencing of children that lawyers, children's rights activists and others can use as a free resource. Below is a small snapshot of significant legal challenges on this issue.
Details of further court cases as well as relevant laws can be found in our country reports on States which still authorise the inhuman sentencing of children, and our reports on life imprisonment of children in the European Union and in the Commonwealth.
We will continue to update this page with links to case summaries in our legal database, so please email us with suggested cases.
If you are a lawyer who has worked on similar cases, or would like to, please email us so that we can include your name and contact details in our network of legal professionals.
- Mendoza et al v. Argentina (life sentences for children in Argentina amount to arbitrary imprisonment and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment under the American Convention on Human Rights)
- César Alberto Mendoza, et al. (judicial review) (life sentences for children in Argentina are unconstitutional and violate the Convention on the Rights of the Child)
- Bowen and Jones v. Belize (abolished mandatory life without parole sentences for children in Belize)
- Maimuna Abdulmumini v. Nigeria (death sentence imposed on girl in Nigeria for an offence committed while aged 13 violated her rights under the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights and African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child)
- Anderson v. R (boy sentenced to life imprisonment in Tuvalu for an offence committed while aged 16)
- Roper v. Simmons (abolished death penalty for children in the United States)
- Graham v. Florida (abolished life without parole sentences for children for non-homicide offences in the United States)