DUSHANBE -- Tajikistan’s government says five Tajik citizens currently on death row in China could avoid execution due to a new agreement expected to go into effect on July 19.

The Foreign Ministry said on June 20 that Tajik and Chinese officials on June 19 exchanged documents in Beijing confirming that an agreement on handing Chinese and Tajik convicts to their respective countries had been ratified by the two neighboring states.

The agreement, which was signed by both sides in 2014, is to come into force 30 days after the ratification documents' exchange, meaning July 19.

At least 15 Tajik nationals are currently in detention in China. Five of them have been sentenced to death.

In January 2016, China executed a 51-year-old Tajik man, Hasan Yusufov, who had been convicted of drug trafficking.