DEATH PENALTY: THE UN COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS MAKES A STEP BACKWARDS - IT REMAINS SILENT ON THE PROPOSAL OF A MORATORIUM ON CAPITAL EXECUTIONS AT THE UN GENERAL ASSEMBLY IN 1999.

IT IS NOW UP TO THE EUROPEAN UNION TO REVERSE THIS DANGEROUS TREND.

Geneva, 28 April, 1999. After two years, when the Commission on Human Rights has taken significant steps forward for the adoption of a universal moratorium on executions and the abolition of the death penalty world-wide, the resolution submitted by the European Union and adopted today by the UN Commission (30 for, 11 against and 12 abstentions) surprisingly does not mention a request of adopting a moratorium by the 1999 session of the UN General Assembly, which could obtain the support of at least 100 States.

In the current conditions, when there are certainly at least 100 UN Member States opposing the death penalty or having established a moratorium on executions, when the States participating in UN bodies such as the International Tribunals for Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, as well accepting the Statute of the International Criminal Court, explicitelly exclude the death penalty, the resolution which does not deny the legitimacy of the capital punishment and fails to make a direct proposal for the UN General Assembly to establish a moratorium on executions in 1999, could represent a step backwards on the way to the universal moratorium on executions and world-wide abolition of the death penalty.

In such a situation it is now up to the European Union as such and to the present german and the futur finnish presidency to reverse this dangerous trend, taking the decision in the very next weeks to put on the agenda of the next General Assembly the question of the establishment of a worldwide moratorium by the United Nations.

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