04/10/2010

World Day against Death Penalty

By Eduard Kukan MEP

The death penalty represents the ultimate in cruelty. It is an inhuman and degrading punishment which violates the right to life and should not be tolerated wherever it happens.

To this day, 154 states in the world have abolished the death penalty de jure or de facto. Ninety-six states have abolished the death penalty for any offense, while eight states keep it for exceptional crimes, such as those committed in war time. Six states have a moratorium on executions in place, and forty-four states are de facto abolitionist.

A small number of countries still execute children, including Iran, who does it the most. The Presidential Council of Iraq has recently ratified the death sentences of at least 900 prisoners, including women and children.

The European Union should be standing at the forefront of the struggle to eliminate this practice. That is why the European Parliament continues in its efforts to achieve a universal abolition of the death penalty. Since 26 April 2007 every year it adopts a resolution calling for a global moratorium on the death penalty on or close to the World Day against the Death Penalty, which takes place on 10 October.

On 26 November 2009 it adopted a resolution on minority rights and the application of the death penalty in China and on 20 November 2008 a resolution on the death penalty in Nigeria, for example.
Prior to that, Parliament's Presidents expressed their commitment to abolishing the death penalty in their addresses.


Parliament's policy on capital punishment

The European Parliament focuses on calling on the Council and the Commission to encourage the remaining countries that have not ratified the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights - which provides for the abolition of the death penalty - to do so, as well as the Member States that have not signed Protocol No 13 to the European Convention on Human Rights on the death penalty.

The EU seeks universal acceptance of this policy against punishment by death, considering that it violates the right to life enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The death penalty has no proven effect on trends in violent crimes and it mostly affects underprivileged people.

Its position on the death penalty is one of the EU's major policy differences with the USA.


Events

The Human Rights Committee in the European Parliament is preparing a hearing on the death penalty on 14 October, which will review the EU's actions in relation to the EU Guidelines on the Death Penalty, as well as prepare the next UN General Assembly and hear from other relevant experts.

Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations, will also address MEPs in Strasbourg on Tuesday 19 October.