UNITED NATIONS

COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS

53rd SESSION

Geneva, 18. March 1997

Statement of the Transnational Radical Party

Under Item 14

STATUS OF THE INTERNATIONAL COVENANTS ON HUMAN RIGHTS

by Prof. William Schabas

Mr. Chairman,

Some thirty states are now parties to the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights aimed at abolition of the death penalty, adopted in 1989 and in force since 1991. They make up the core of fifty states that are bound by international law to abolish the death penalty, by their ratification of one of four international that abolish the death penalty. Hands Off Cain, an international campaign initiated by the Transnational Radical Party, calls upon the Commission on Human Rights to keep the question of abolition of capital punishment on the international human rights Agenda.

In recent decades, the United Nations has contributed immensely to the debate on the death penalty. Besides the adoption of the Second Optional Protocol, reference must be made to the Statutes of the ad hoc Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, which exclude the death penalty as a possible sanction. International justice no longer tolerates capital punishment, even for those responsible for genocide and war crimes. Furthermore, the draft statute of the proposed International Criminal Court also excludes capital punishment. Fifty years ago, at Nuremberg and Tokyo, the death penalty was the norm. How things have changed since then!

Now is the time for the United Nations, and especially for the Commission on Human Rights, to ask States that have not done so to consider acceding to the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, aiming at the abolition of the death penalty. It is also time to urge retentionist states not only to restrict the number of capital crimes but also to accept a moratorium on executions.

The Hands Off Cain campaign supports the idea of a moratorium because states which adopt this measure can are provided with political and legal breathing space to consider and evaluate the effects of complete abolition. In South Africa, after five years of a legal moratorium, the death penalty was successfully abolished, first by judgment of the Constitutional Court and subsequently by a provision in the new constitution.

The Council of Europe will only accept members if they introduce an immediate moratorium on executions and undertake to abolish the death penalty within a short time. Thanks to this policy many Eastern Europe countries have already abolished capital punishment. A recent and clear example was set by President Boris Yeltsin of the Russian Federation, who declared only a few weeks ago that his Foreign Minister had been instructed to ratify the Sixth Protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights.

What is more, many retentionist states such as Zimbabwe and Jamaica have undertaken formal or de facto moratoria in recent years, so the idea can hardly be unacceptable to them. The large acceptance of the idea of a universal moratorium on executions was also demonstrated in 1994, by the outcome of the vote of the General Assembly on a resolution presented by the Italian government at the suggestion of the Transnational Radical Party and the abolitionist campaign "Hands off Cain", that asked for a universal suspension of executions.

At the same time we are deeply concerned about the number of executions taking place in too many areas of the world, in particular in countries such as Nigeria, Iran, Iraq, Sudan, China and the United States. For this reason we urge all States that maintain the death penalty to comply fully with their obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Safeguards Guaranteeing Protection of the Rights of Those Facing the death Penalty, and in particular to exclude pregnant women, juveniles and insane persons from capital punishment.

All this considered, a silence on capital punishment by the Commission on Human Rights would be a major setback to these important efforts within the United Nations system by those striving for the recognition of the abolishment of the death penalty as an enhancement of human dignity. It is also time for the Secretary General to submit a report to the Commission on the political debate on the death penalty taking place in various countries, international organizations and NGOs in the world. This report should monitor political strategies on the death penalty problem.

Fifty years ago, this Commission debated the issue of the death penalty as it was drafting article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which protects the right to life. Some argued that the death penalty should be recognized as an exception to the right to life, but Rene Cassin and Eleanor Roosevelt refused. Admitting that in 1948 the idea might be premature, they nevertheless envisaged a right of the individual not to be killed by the state that would be recognized over the decades to come. That time has now arrived.