government announced that optional Turkish and Kurdish language courses would be offered in schools in two provinces, Kurdistan and West Azerbaijan, although implementation remained unclear. Members of the Turkmen minority publicly appealed to President Rouhani for a similar dispensation. WOMEN’S RIGHTS The authorities renewed their crackdown on women human rights defenders and increasingly likened any collective initiative relating to feminism and women’s rights to criminal activity. Women’s rights activists who had campaigned for greater representation of women in the February parliamentary elections were subjected by the Revolutionary Guards to lengthy, oppressive interrogations, and threats of imprisonment on national security charges. Women remained subject to pervasive discrimination in law and practice, including in access to divorce, employment, equal inheritance and political office and in the area of criminal law. Several draft laws that would further erode women’s right to sexual and reproductive health remained pending. Women continued to have reduced access to affordable modern contraception as the authorities failed to restore the budget of the state family planning programme cut in 2012. In September, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei issued national family policies promoting early marriage, repeated childbearing, fewer divorces and greater compliance to “traditional” roles of women as housewives and men as breadwinners. The policies raised concern that women victims of domestic violence may face further marginalization and increased pressure to “reconcile” with abusers and remain in abusive marital relationships. Women and girls remained inadequately protected against sexual and other genderbased violence, including early and forced marriage. The authorities failed to adopt laws criminalizing these and other abuses, including marital rape and domestic violence, although the Vice-President on Women and Amnesty International Report 2016/17 Family Affairs pushed a draft bill that had been pending since 2012. Compulsory “veiling” (hijab) laws, which violated women’s rights to equality, privacy, and freedoms of expression, belief and religion, continued to empower police and paramilitary forces to target women for harassment, violence, and imprisonment. DEATH PENALTY The authorities continued to use the death penalty extensively, including against juvenile offenders. Hundreds of executions were carried out after unfair trials. Some executions were conducted in public. Those executed were mostly sentenced for drugs offences that did not meet the threshold of “most serious crimes” under international human rights law. The Supreme Court ruled that those sentenced for drugs offences prior to the adoption of the 2015 Code of Criminal Procedure had the right to appeal, but many death row prisoners remained unaware of this development. Others were sentenced for murder, or on vague offences such as “enmity against God”. Following the mass execution of 25 Sunni men in August, the authorities broadcast forced “confession” videos, apparently to demonize the men and divert attention from the deeply flawed trials that led to their death sentences. At least two men convicted of “insulting the Prophet” received death sentences, in violation of their rights to life and freedoms of belief, religion and expression. At least 78 juvenile offenders remained on death row. They included 15 juvenile offenders who were sentenced to death for the first time under the revised juvenile sentencing guidelines of the 2013 Islamic Penal Code as well as several who again received death sentences after they were retried. Amnesty International was able to confirm the execution of two juvenile offenders during the year, among them Hassan Afshar, although the total number could be much higher. 195