By Emma Bonino
ROME, Mar 3 2014 (IPS)

Until the late 1970s, only 16 countries had abolished the capital punishment for all crimes. Today, abolitionist nations are the overwhelming majority. More than two-thirds of nations, over 150 of the 193 members of the United Nations, have now rejected the death penalty or do not carry out executions.

This evolution was led by the recognition that in any judicial procedure there is always the risk of a miscarriage of justice. If a person is jailed and later found to be innocent she or he can be released and provided compensation for the time unduly spent in prison. This is not possible if an innocent sentenced to death has already been executed. The punishment is final and irreversible and there is no possible appeal from the grave.

The death penalty is a toxic and destructive punishment that causes untold injustice and suffering. It represents the ultimate denial of human rights. In the words of Albert Camus, the French Nobel prize winner for literature, “capital punishment is the most premeditated of murders.”

Unfortunately the cross-party in favour of the death penalty is still operating on a global scale. It goes beyond ideologies, religions, political trends, historical periods and international law. Gallows are still erected in capitalist democracies as well as in authoritarian or fundamentalist regimes, in poor countries as well as in rich and developed nations.

The list of crimes punishable by death is extensive and changes with time. Only the reason to justify the death penalty remains unchanged: it is considered as a deterrent against criminals; the supreme prerogative of the State to punish in “an appropriate way” the most heinous crimes.

These are both specious and simply irrational reasons. No one has ever been able to demonstrate the deterrent effect of the death penalty on crimes. Executions do not deliver public safety or deter violent crime – instead they endorse violence, sometimes fuelling cycles of violence and retribution. It is no surprise the States that have abolished the death penalty often have lower murder rates than those that have yet to do so.

It is therefore of paramount importance that countries that still envisage the death penalty ensure that information and statistics regarding its use are made publicly available. Only an objectively informed public opinion can accept and support reforms of the penal system aimed at abolishing the capital punishment as cruel and ineffective.

Nowadays there is a growing awareness on the issue and it is a fact that the trend towards abolition finds echoes in every region of the world. Even retentionist countries which head today the sad tally of executions are rethinking their approach.

Having said so, we must recognise that much progress still remains to be done. The situation in many countries is still a cause of grave concern. In some cases, we have witnessed the worrying phenomenon of some countries, which had previously agreed on endorsing the moratorium, to take the decision of re-establishing the death penalty. This is an involution which has distinguished mostly Asia but also Africa, with the reactivation of executions in Nigeria and Gambia.

Italy is proud to be part of the cross-regional coalition of States supporting the international campaign against the capital punishment. We took a strong and principled position against the death penalty. This campaign represents a priority for Italy’s foreign policy and has the full support of our Parliament and civil society.

Italy has been a major sponsor of the United Nations’ General Assembly Resolution on a universal moratorium of the death penalty since its inception in 1994. We are an active part of the interregional task force entrusted with its drafting. We also are one of the most active promoters of the campaign to convince countries previously abstaining or voting against the text to switch their votes in favour of the resolution.

While not legally binding, the United Nations resolutions have been a political breakthrough, sending a strong message to the minority of countries still adhering to capital punishment that it is time to reject what is increasingly seen as a cruel and counter-productive practice.

It is hard to overstate progress on this issue. A watershed moment came six years ago when, in December 2007, the United Nations General Assembly first adopted a resolution calling for a universal moratorium on the death penalty, with a view to a complete abolition.

This achievement was reinforced by three further UN General Assembly resolutions, in Decembers 2008, 2010 and 2012. On each occasion, the vote supporting the call for a moratorium gathered strength: rising from 104 votes to 111, while those States voting negatively fell from 54 to 41.

Next fall, first the United Nations General Assembly Third Commission and then its plenary shall negotiate and vote the fifth resolution on the universal moratorium. We will try to reinforce also the content of the text, calling for the imposition of death penalty only for the most serious crimes and to establish a Special Rapporteur or Special Adviser of the Secretary General on the issue of the death penalty.

Excerpt:

On Dec. 18, 2007, the approval of a resolution for a moratorium on executions by the United Nations General Assembly was hailed as a milestone in the struggle to abolish the death penalty worldwide. It is true that the United Nations may not impose the abolition of the death penalty, but the moral and political value of the resolution is undeniable.

Since the founding of the abolitionist organisation Hands Off Cain in 1993, 56 of the 97 retentionist States that were members of the U.N. at that time have abandoned the practice of the death penalty. Fifteen of them have done so since 2006, the year following the re-launching of the initiative at the U.N. General Assembly. Three more countries (Palau, East-Timor and Tuvalu) that became members of the U.N. after 1993 are also abolitionist.

On the eve of the fourth U.N. General Assembly vote on the death penalty resolution, expected later this year, it is important to review the current situation.

There are 154 countries and territories that, to varying degrees, have decided to renounce the death penalty. Of these: 100 are totally abolitionist, seven are abolitionist for ordinary crimes, five have a moratorium on executions in place and 42 are de facto abolitionist (i.e. countries that have not carried out any executions for at least 10 years or countries that have binding obligations not to use the death penalty). On the other hand, there are 44 retentionist countries.

There were 19 countries that carried out executions in 2011, compared to 27 countries in 2006.

In 2011 there were at least 5,000 executions, compared to at least 5,946 in 2010, at least 5,741 in 2009, at least 5,735 in 2008 and at least 5,851 in 2007. A major turnabout came after the introduction in China of a legal reform on Jan. 1, 2007, which requires every capital sentence handed down to be reviewed by the Supreme Court. According to the U.S.-based Dui Hua Foundation’s estimates, executions in China have dropped 50 percent since 2007 (to around 4,000 per year).

However, the most significant facts concerning abolition came from Africa, home to the largest number of de facto abolitionist countries and where abolition had the same rhythm as the U.S. Since 2007, Connecticut, Illinois, New Mexico and New Jersey abolished the death penalty, while the governor of Oregon declared a moratorium on all executions last year.

In Africa, Rwanda, Burundi, Gabon, Togo and Benin completely eliminated the death penalty. In the first two countries in particular – being lands where the endless cycle of vengeance and the eternal drama of Cain and Abel has been played out most truly and tragically – abolition took on an extraordinary symbolic, as well as legal and political, value.

Africa remains the primary target-continent of the lobbying for additional support to the new Resolution on a moratorium on executions at the U.N. General Assembly 2012 because we continue to register the most significant political and legislative steps towards abolition.

During the last mission carried out by Hands Off Cain in the Central African Republic from Oct. 24-27, our arrival was greeted with news of the approval, by the Council of Ministers, of a bill for the abolition of the death penalty from the penal code. When minister of Justice Jacques M’Bosso met the delegation, he expressed the will of his country to become one of the protagonists of the abolitionist process.

Prime Minister Faustin-Archange Touadera himself assured us that the Central African Republic would vote in favor of the resolution on the Universal Moratorium that will be presented next month at the U.N. He expressed the political will to implement all legal means available to remove the death penalty, which has not been applied in the country for over 30 years, thus confirming the commitments undertaken by his government before the U.N. Human Rights Council for the ratification of the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

These openings must, however, correspond to a commitment by the international community to improve prison conditions. While in the capital Bangui, the delegation visited the female prison of Bangui-Bimbo and the male prison of Ngaragba.

The former was a small institution that housed 31 women and three girls in three separate dormitories. Two-thirds of these women are awaiting trial and many have been accused of witchcraft.

The male prison houses 328 men, two-thirds of whom are awaiting trial. The structure is divided into blocks depending on the prisoner’s security risk and type of crime. Each block has a different name: the White Room, reserved for political prisoners today, is a maximum security facility; Couloir is reserved for those caught practicing sorcery; Iraq for violent crimes; Golo-Waka for theft and consumption of cannabis, and DDP’for crimes against the public administration.

The institute is in very poor condition: the vast majority of detainees sleep directly on the floor in conditions that barely meet the minimum hygiene standards and where the food is prepared and distributed in unsanitary conditions. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

Elisabetta Zamparutti is deputy in Italian parliament and treasurer of Hands Off Cain.

Ten years of campaigning by the World Coalition against the Death Penalty have brought fruit: the number of countries that have abolished capital punishment in law or practice has gone up to 140. But some countries have resumed executions this year.

“Today, 140 countries have abolished the death penalty in law or practice. They are either completely abolitionist or have not carried out any execution for at least ten years as an official policy, not a random phenomenon. This makes up 70 percent of the world states,” Jan Erik Wetzel, Amnesty International advocate for the death penalty, told IPS in an interview.

“In 2003, only 80 countries were completely abolitionist. Ten years later, their number has risen to 97. We have abolition or a dramatic decrease of the executions in all regions and legal systems of the world. Asia and the Arab region are more difficult than others, but the death penalty is surmountable everywhere.”

According to Amnesty International, 14 countries still retain the death penalty in Asia. But 17, including Cambodia, Nepal, Bhutan, the Philippines and East Timor, have abolished it for all crimes. China, that executes most people by far in the world, has abolished the death penalty for 13 mostly economic crimes.

In the Middle East and North Africa, four out of 19 countries – Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Yemen – accounted for 99 percent of all executions last year, with a dramatic increase in Iraq (mainly for “terrorist” crimes) and Saudi Arabia (particularly for drug offenders). An increase was noted also in the Hamas controlled part of the Gaza strip. But Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Turkey, Albania, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco and Djibouti have either abolished or reduced executions dramatically. In Lebanon and Jordan the number of the death sentences has gone down, even though to a lesser extent.

“In Tunisia and Egypt, after the Arab spring, we have made sure that the death penalty becomes a part of the discussion,” Wetzel said. “In Tunisia, we suggested to abolish it and discussions are still ongoing, but the signs are not good. For these countries, we had high hopes after the uprisings, but they have not materialised.”

However, he finds it encouraging that Tunisia has not executed for more than a decade, and that President Moncef Marzouki commuted 122 death sentences in January this year. And that in Egypt former president Hosni Mubarak was sentenced to life imprisonment. “The death penalty has become part of the political conversation, when nobody talked about it before. There are very committed activists in both countries. Since the uprisings, they do a lot of grassroots work that may not bring success immediately.”

“In Egypt, for the first time people can shape the agenda,” Amr Issam of the Mission of Egypt to the UN told IPS. It would be difficult for the new government to go against the majority of the population, he said. “The key challenge is to have a constructive dialogue to encourage states to revisit the list of crimes that are punishable by death. And to bring in more safeguards and a more independent judicial process.”

States that retain the death penalty must limit it to the most serious crimes, which has been interpreted to mean the crime of murder, Kyung-Wha Kang, deputy UN high commissioner for human rights, reminded a conference to celebrate ten years of a campaign against the death penalty at the United Nations office in Geneva this week. Use of the death penalty for drug smuggling should be abolished, he said.

“In the early 1990s, we started cooperation between civil society and the Italian government for a moratorium,” said Emma Bonino, vice-president of the Italian Senate and a pioneer in the fight against capital punishment. “Many human rights groups were against the moratorium, they wanted to go for abolition. It has been a tough discussion. But today people recognise that having gone for a moratorium was a success. All the countries that have arrived to abolition have first gone through it.”

According to Amnesty International, each year, in addition to an unknown number of people executed in China, many countries including Iran, the U.S., Yemen and North Korea each carry out scores of executions. And there are backlashes: this year, Botswana, the Gambia and Japan resumed executions. Gambia had not carried out executions for the past 30 years.

A collateral and completely neglected effect of capital punishment is its impact on the orphans left behind. “There is very little research on this issue,” Helen Kearney, from the Quakers UN Office in Geneva, told IPS. “But evidence highlights serious emotional implications for these children, such as post-traumatic stress diseases and a huge social stigma.”

She deplores the lack of data collection, even in the United States, where no special programme exists to take care of the children. In some countries, especially the ones where the death penalty is routinely applied in cases of domestic violence and the children may lose both parents, they end up on the street. “We want a reframing of this question. It is a child rights and a public health issue, it is intergenerational and it reaches out to the wider community. States must take their responsibility.”