United Nations Calls for Halt to Death Penalty
After two prior attempts in the 1990s, the United Nations General Assembly unanimously approved this past week a resolution calling for a halt on executions worldwide.
The resolution, which was passed Tuesday by the192-member world body by a 104 to 54 vote, calls for "a moratorium on executions with a view to abolishing the death penalty." The U.N.'s approval was expected since last month, when the resolution was adopted by a committee following a fierce debate.
Although legally non-binding, the resolution carries moral weight and reflects world opinion.
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The decision was hailed as a global trend toward abolishing the death penalty.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called the resolution a "bold step by the international community."
"I am particularly encouraged by the support expressed for this initiative from many diverse regions of the world. This is further evidence of a trend towards ultimately abolishing the death penalty," he said.
Two similar attempts – one in 1994 and another in 1999 – failed in the assembly.
Foreign Minister Massimo D'Alema of Italy, which introduced the resolution in the first attempt, called it a "historic day" and said the moratorium was not an "interference" but "an important opportunity for international debate."
"[W]e call on each member state of the United Nations to implement the resolution and also to open a debate on the death penalty," he told reporters after the vote.
Proponents of the moratorium say capital punishment undermines human rights, is a questionable deterrent and has mistakenly killed innocent people.
"There is no conclusive evidence of the death penalty's deterrence value and . . . any miscarriage or failure of justice in the death penalty's implementation is irreversible and irreparable," they said in the resolution.
In an editorial posted Wednesday in The Los Angeles Times, Louise Arbour, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, said the death penalty should be regarded as an "extreme exception to the fundamental right to life."
She also decried cases in countries like Iran and Japan where capital punishment was carried out in cruel or inhumane ways.
All European Union nations and almost all Latin American states supported the resolution.
But the United States departed from allies Turkey and Israel and joined Iran, Syria, Sudan, China and North Korea in opposing the moratorium.
China is the world's leader of executions, accounting for 5,000 of the 5,628 executions last year, reported Hands Off Cain, a Rome-based anti-death penalty group.
Barbados, Nigeria and Singapore were among the most vocal critics of the resolution.
"Capital punishment remains legal under international law and Barbados wishes to exercise its sovereign right to use it as a deterrent to the most serious crimes," Mohammed Degia, first secretary for Barbados, said just prior to the vote.
In the United States, New Jersey became the first state last week in more than 40 years to abolish the death penalty. It joins 13 other states that ban the practice.
The nation's Supreme Court has issued a moratorium on executions as it considers the constitutionality of lethal injection, a case slated to be heard on Jan. 7.
Mario Marazziti, co-founder of the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty, was encouraged by recent progress in the fight to abolition.
"These accomplishments, in New Jersey and at the U.N., provide vital proof that there is worldwide growth of a new moral standard of decency and of respect for human rights, even the rights and lives of those who may have committed severe crimes," he said, according to the LA Times.
