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Brunei has said new laws to punish gay sex by stoning to death are meant to help citizens and would rarely be used in practice.

Responding to the UN which called the measures "cruel and inhuman", Brunei's foreign ministry said in a letter that Sharia law "focuses more on prevention than punishment".

"Its aim is to educate, deter, rehabilitate and nurture rather than to punish," the letter added.

The small, oil-rich South East Asian nation has faced global backlash after rolling out a harsh range of capital punishments also including death by stoning for adultery and amputation for theft.

The UN's High Commissioner for Human Rights warned Brunei in a letter earlier this month that implementing them would violate the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, ratified by Brunei in 2006.

Foreign minister Erywan Yusof insisted in the response dated April 7 that Brunei has a "strong commitment" to human rights.

Criminalising "adultery and sodomy" will benefit Muslims and particularly women, he suggested, writing that it would "safeguard the sanctity of family lineage and marriage".

The laws will only apply to Muslims, and anybody accused will get a "just and fair trial".

The minister also noted that the punishments of stoning to death and amputation, known as hadd, have "extremely high evidentiary threshold, requiring no less than two to four men of high moral standing and piety as witnesses".

These are almost impossible to find, he claimed, hinting that the laws would in practice hardly ever be used.

"The standards of piety of the male witness is extremely high that it is extremely difficult to find one in this day and age, to the extent that convictions of hadd may solely rest on confessions of the offender," wrote Yusof.

The punitive new codes are part of Brunei's years-long programme to incorporate Sharia into official legal practice alongside common law.

The first phase was implemented in 2014, and saw fines and prison sentences imposed for particular offences.

The second came into force at the start of April after years of delays, and was passed despite outcry from politicians, human rights groups and celebrities including actor George Clooney.

Rape, robbery and insulting the Prophet Mohammed are now all also punishable by death.