PENALTY

The successor Human Rights Council has not so far addressed the issue.
Nor has it needed to, for the issue has now returned to the General
Assembly. In 2007, Italy successfully proposed General Assembly Resolution
62/149, calling for “a moratorium on executions with a view to
abolishing the death penalty.” The resolution’s preamble acknowledged
the important role of the Commission on Human Rights. While the
softening of the language on abolition to a tone reminiscent of earlier
formulations is notable, the General Assembly’s support for a moratorium
is an important step. It was controversial, but an absolute majority
voted for it (104 for, 54 against and 29 abstentions). Since then, several
similar resolutions have been adopted, with a larger adopting majority
each time. The latest was General Assembly Resolution 69/186 in
2014, with 117 votes in favour, 37 against and 34 abstentions.
One other development in these resolutions has been the invocation
of human rights in general terms, without reference to any specific
right, even the right to life. The UDHR and ICCPR are invoked in
the preamble without reference to specific articles, with the statements
that “the use of the death penalty undermines human dignity”
and a moratorium “contributes to the enhancement and progressive
development of human rights.” It is hard to evaluate the significance
of this. On the one hand, no right is identified as being (potentially)
violated by the death penalty. On the other, the language implies that,
in addition to the right to life, other rights relating to human dignity
may be at stake. The most prominent of these would be the right not
to be subjected to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment
or punishment, which has traditionally been depicted as at the core
of the notion of human dignity. For instance, according to Article 2
of General Assembly Resolution 3452 (XXX) of 1975, “Any act of
torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment is
an offence to human dignity.”
THE ROLE OF CIVIL SOCIETY
If substantial majorities of United Nations member states are now willing
to express themselves repeatedly in favour of abolition of the death
penalty, this must be primarily attributable to the fact that a clear majority
(105) of the world’s 198 states are now abolitionist for all crimes
(98) or for “ordinary crimes” (crimes not imperilling state security,
such as treason or other serious crimes committed in wartime) (7). In
comparison, in 1973, only 25 states were abolitionist. That was the year
that Amnesty International adopted a policy supporting abolition of the
death penalty, not only in political cases but also for ordinary crimes.
In 1977, Amnesty International convened a major international conference
on abolition of the death penalty that took place in Stockholm.
It was accompanied by a book-length report on the death penalty
worldwide, and it met while representatives of the organization were
receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo. This confluence of events led
to substantial media coverage of the issue. After that, the organization
intensified its existing collaboration with other non-governmental
organisations (NGOs) in the human rights field to promote abolition
and, particularly important, to intervene to try to save people sentenced
to death from execution. Whatever the individual results of such actions
were, it was evident that international awareness of the issue was on the
rise. This took place within the context of a dominant human rights
discourse. NGOs had no hesitation in invoking both the right to life
and the prohibition of cruel and inhuman punishment. Human rights
discourse was beginning to play an influential role in international
politics generally; the death penalty component of it caught this wave.
At the United Nations, NGOs did not play a powerful role in instigating
action, and they were unable to prevent the setbacks discussed
earlier. However, at the regional level, their role was unmistakable. In
1983, the Council of Europe adopted the Protocol to the European
Convention of Human Rights, which pledged states to abolition of
the death penalty, at least for ordinary crimes. The initiator of the
process leading to this achievement was Austrian Justice Minister
Christian Broda, who had attended the Stockholm conference.
Four years later, in a speech in Strasbourg accepting the Council of
Europe’s 1987 Human Rights Prize, he said:
We owe to the World Conference against the death penalty,
organized in Stockholm by Amnesty International on
10-11 December 1977, the idea . . . that anyone who
opposes torture must favour abolition of the death penalty. 13
13 Council of Europe, press release, 28 January 1987, doc. D (87) 3.
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