UN Commission on Human Rights

Fifty-fifth session

Provisional agenda item 17 (a)

Promotion and protection of human rights: Status of the International Covenants on Human Rights

Oral statement by the Transnational Radical Party, a non-governmental organisation in general consultative status

Delivered by Marino Busdachin

Geneva, 20 April 1999

Madam Chair,

It was four and a half years ago. The UN General Assembly voted a Draft Resolution against the death penalty. Italy was the country that more than others stood and worked for its approval. The engagement of the Italian Government was so clear and strong that it decided to charge for this specific effort TRP's Secretary Ms. Emma Bonino, today European Commissioner for humanitarian aid, as Special Representative of Italy for this issue.

Actualy, Madam Chair, the Draft Resolution was defeated. After having voted for the inclusion of the Item in the Agenda, the UN General Assembly voted against the Draft Resolution. But it was a political success, and it was kept like a success by a vast share of the world public opinion.

The Draft Resolution was defeated at the UNGA for only 7 votes. Meanwhile, a lot of things have happened.

A number of Parliaments in the world have changed their penal codes, deleting or suspending the death penalty; the European Parliament has confirmed many times the will of the vast majority of Europeans to abolish the death penalty all over the world; there is no death penalty anymore in South America and in a number of countries on each continent.

Today there are at least 100 member States of the UN that have abolished the capital punishment or have suspended executions.

It is also very important to remind that the Statute of the International Tribunal for Crimes committed in former Yugoslavia does not allow any sentence to death. The Statute of the International Criminal Court also excludes the death penalty.

Madam Chair,

These four and half years have not passed in vain. The majority of states are against the death penalty. A new Resolution will be voted and approved here in this Commission.

Moreover, for the first time, the Draft Resolution on death penalty will be proposed not just by single states, but by the European Union as such: no doubt that this circumstance means further strength; no doubt that such a circumstance will increase - and not decrease - the will and the engagement of the EU member states.

Never in the world such a vast majority of states has been against the death penalty; and the text of the Resolution could and should be, because of that, stronger and more concrete.

We ask the States - starting from those that have proposed the Draft Resolution - at least to delete one thing and to add one needed thing: any part where states are asked to abolish or suspend the death penalty for specific categories of individuals, such as minors, mentally disabled, pregnant women... should be deleted. The UN Commission on Human Rights should declare that the death penalty must be abolished for any person.

Then, something very important is missing in the Draft Resolution we have the chance to read: it is the request to the 1999 Session of the UNGA to adopt a Resolution declaring a world-wide moratorium on executions, a crucial step towards the definitive abolition of the capital punishment all over the world.

The EU Draft Resolution does not contain any step forward. There are moments when not making a step forward means concretely a step backwards.

Whithout a direct proposal to the General Assembly, the resolution of the Commission on Human Rights risks to be just an alibi to avoid the G.A. decision

The year 1999 should be the year of the world-wide moratorium: all the needed conditions are ready to give the world such a conquest in 1999, this year.

Thank you, Madam Chair.