UNITED NATIONS

Press release

COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS TAKES UP STATUS OF INTERNATIONAL COVENANTS, FUNCTIONING OF UN HUMAN RIGHTS BODIES

Hears Address by Minister of Justice of South Africa

The Commission on Human Rights concluded this afternoon its review of recism and xenophobia and began discussing the status of international covenants on human rights and the effective funcioning of bodies established pursuant to United Nations human-rights instruments. Speakers called for further efforts to abolish capital punishment and an increase in technical assistance to States seeking to improve their human-rights situations.

A group of 37 non-governmental organizations spoke in opposition to what they termed efforts to censor the reports and otherwise interfere with the work of human-rights Special Rapporteurs.

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Delivering formal statements at the meeting were representatives of the United States, Turkey, Iran, Libya, Israel, Ireland, Italy, Norway and Estonia.

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ANNE ANDERSON (Ireland) said last year the Commission had adopted for the first time a resolution calling on States to abolish the death penalty, after a debate conducted in a positive atmosphere, without polarization and with mutual respect. It was important to sustain such an atmosphere and that this year's resolution received even broader support. It was especially important to struggle to eliminate any execution of persons for crimes committed when they were under age 18. Ireland also felt great concern over executions of persons who were mentally disabled. If the death penalty itself was a cause of great uneasiness around the world, certainly there was no excuse for applying it to young or vulnerable people. In the past year two States had abolished the death penalty for all crimes; other progress also was taking place, such as a clear call for universal abolition by the Council of Europe, and the decision to exclude the death penalty for crimes against humanity under consideration by the International

Criminal Tribunals for former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Ireland is hopeful that this approach will be maintained when the draft statute for the permanent International Criminal Court is finalised later this year.

MARIO ALESSI (Italy) said the issue of the death penalty was indeed on the basis of concepts which were common to all religions: the sanctity of human life, the valued of human dignity, the precept of mercy, and the gift of compassion. The fact that historically those principles had been applied to different degrees in different parts of the world certainly did not justify their appropriation by any one religion, nor, conversely, could their rejection be attributed to the precept of any religion. What Italy considered as the moral inadmissibility of taking human life seemed to it to be hardly discouraged by subsequently taking another human life, legal as it might be in some countries. The State should punish, and harshly when necessary; but should break the chain of death, land aim instead at protecting its citizens and reforming the culprit at the same time. It should abstain from an act which, inevitably lies on the border between justice and revenge.

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MALLE TALVET (Estonia) said that last week the country's legislature, by ratifying the protocol No.6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, had voted in favour of abolition of the death penalty. The action followed a moratorium; the thinking was that the majority of studies on the issue demonstrated that there was no reliable evidence that the death penalty deterred more effectively than other punishments, and that its use entailed the risk of error. The delegation now hoped the country would make speedy progress in acceding to the second optional protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Estonia strongly supported the draft resolution initiated by the Italian delegation on the subject of capital punishment.

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SISTER HELEN PREJEAN, of the Transnational Radical Party, said it would be appropriate if last year's resolution opposing the death penatly were to be strengthened this year. Ablition of the death penalty went far beyond claiming the right to life and said a more significant "no" to a punishment which reduced the offender to a kind of disposable human race. Also, there was no humane way to kill a person because human beings had consciuousness and emotions and when condemned to death imagined and anticipated death, and died a thousand times before they died. All those she had accompanied to execution said, "I am so tired"; the preparation for the punishment, the suffering, had exhausted them. She appealed to her own country, the United States, to dimantle its machinery of death, which was applied, among other things, to the mentally retarded and juveniles as young as 16. She asked the United States and China to free themselves from this intolerable anachronism.

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