CCPR/C/GC/36 48. Article 6 (5) prohibits the imposition of the death penalty for crimes committed by persons below the age of 18 at the time of the offence.205 This necessarily implies that such persons can never face the death penalty for that offence, regardless of their age at the time of sentencing or at the time foreseen for carrying out the sentence.206 If there is no reliable and conclusive proof that the person was not below the age of 18 at the time the crime was committed, he or she will have the right to the benefit of the doubt and the death penalty cannot be imposed.207 Article 6 (5) also prohibits States parties from carrying out the death penalty on pregnant women. 49. States parties must refrain from imposing the death penalty on individuals who face special barriers in defending themselves on an equal basis with others, such as persons whose serious psychosocial or intellectual disabilities impede their effective defence, 208 and on persons who have limited moral culpability. They should also refrain from executing persons who have a diminished ability to understand the reasons for their sentence, and persons whose execution would be exceptionally cruel or would lead to exceptionally harsh results for them and their families, such as persons of advanced age,209 parents of very young or dependent children, and individuals who have suffered serious human rights violations in the past.210 50. Article 6 (6) reaffirms the position that States parties that are not yet totally abolitionist should be on an irrevocable path towards complete eradication of the death penalty, de facto and de jure, in the foreseeable future. The death penalty cannot be reconciled with full respect for the right to life, and abolition of the death penalty is both desirable211 and necessary for the enhancement of human dignity and progressive development of human rights.212 It is contrary to the object and purpose of article 6 for States parties to take steps to increase de facto the rate of use of and the extent to which they resort to the death penalty,213 or to reduce the number of pardons and commutations they grant. 51. Although the allusion to the conditions for application of the death penalty in article 6 (2) suggests that when drafting the Covenant, the States parties did not universally regard the death penalty as a cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment per se, 214 subsequent agreements by the States parties or subsequent practice establishing such agreements may ultimately lead to the conclusion that the death penalty is contrary to article 7 of the Covenant under all circumstances.215 The increasing number of States parties to the Second Optional Protocol to the Covenant, aiming at the abolition of the death penalty, other international instruments prohibiting the imposition or carrying out of the death penalty, and the growing number of non-abolitionist States that have nonetheless introduced a de facto moratorium on the exercise of the death penalty, suggest that considerable progress may have been made towards establishing an agreement among the States parties to consider the death penalty as a cruel, inhuman or degrading form of punishment.216 Such a legal development is consistent with the pro-abolitionist spirit of the Covenant, which manifests itself, inter alia, in the texts of article 6 (6) and the Second Optional Protocol. V. Relationship of article 6 with other articles of the Covenant and other legal regimes 52. The standards and guarantees of article 6 both overlap and interact with other provisions of the Covenant. Some forms of conduct simultaneously violate both article 6 and another article. For example, applying the death penalty in response to a crime that does not constitute a most serious crime (see also para. 35 above) would violate both article 6 (2) and, in light of the extreme nature of the punishment, article 7.217 At other times, the contents of article 6 (1) are informed by the contents of other articles. For example, application of the death penalty may amount to an arbitrary deprivation of life under article 6 by virtue of the fact that it represents a punishment for exercising freedom of expression, in violation of article 19. 53. Article 6 also reinforces the obligations of States parties under the Covenant and the Optional Protocol to protect individuals against reprisals for promoting and striving to protect and realize human rights, including through cooperation or communication with the Committee.218 States parties must take the necessary measures to respond to death threats and 11