Nevertheless, Bede Sheppard, a senior researcher at HRW, said that there is still a "very small and unpleasant club" made up of four countries - Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Sudan -which continue to carry out the practice. The United States could be included in that group until as recently as 2005, when the Supreme Court finally outlawed the death penalty for minors.

Since 1994, Yemen's penal code has prohibited executing anyone under 18, while at the same time referring those over the age of 15 to adult courts. This has created a situation where, as Alison Parker, the chief of communications for UNICEF in Yemen, puts it "between the ages of 15 and 17 there is sort of this grey area."

Over the last six years, Yemen has executed 16 people who claimed to have been underage at the time of their alleged crime. The HRW report lists over twenty children across Yemen still on death row and says that prosecutors have called for the death penalty in 186 additional cases.

Nadim al-'Azaazi is another casualty of this loophole-riddled system. On January 26, a Yemeni judge sentenced now eighteen-year-old Nadim to death. After his arrest three years ago on murder charges, Nadim endured weeks of beatings and interrogation at local police stations before being transferred to the central prison in the capital Sana'a, where he currently awaits unlawful execution.

Speaking from the group cell he shares with nearly forty other young men, Nadim describes what happened when the judge received a medical report putting his age at 15 when he allegedly committed murder. "The court didn't reject it, the family of the victim didn't reject it, and the prosecutor didn't reject it. With that, they sentenced me to death."

The problem in Yemen appears to be two fold. One major issue is determining the age of prisoners in a country where the birth registration rate stands at only 22 percent, the other is a dysfunctional judiciary. Experts say that both the age verification process and Yemeni courts are plagued by unprofessionalism, bias, and corruption.

According to the HRW report, age certification is conducted using questionable methods and inadequately trained staff. "Forensic doctors" rely on wrist or arm x-rays to make their determinations, a technique that has a margin of error of up to two years in either direction. In poverty stricken Yemen, the fact that "bone-age assessments may be influenced by factors including socio-economic background and nutrition," further compounds concerns over the accuracy of the tests.

Even when the defendant's age is determined correctly, they face an uphill battle. The victims' families, especially influential ones, are said to pressure prosecutors and judges, who in turn often act with impunity. As Mohammed Al-Awadai, the manager of juvenile administration in Yemen's prison authority, understands it, "In the Yemeni law, the judge has the right to be discretionary."