The author is Professor of International Law at Naples University and the Head of the Scientific Department of the SOCI (Italian Society for International Organization)..

A number of state legal systems still provide for the death penalty as punishment for the most serious kinds of criminal behaviour.

This is justified in various ways: for example, by its being an effective deterrent that helps to maintain law and order and protect the public; and the need to satisfy public opinion, and also certain traditions.

The death penalty, however, offends the supreme value of human dignity, the right to life, which must be incorporated into international law, and made unassailable, as far as the state or any of its governing bodies (and also its correctly - and legally - functioning law courts) are concerned. Apropos of this, it should be remembered that the system established in the Forties to guarantee people's rights, also made certain human values unassailable as far as the sovereign sate was concerned.

In order to exclude the possibility of the death penalty's being enforced, and to ensure that the indivdual's right to life is protected, it is necessary to limit the domestic jurisdiction of the state, that is, its legal and judicial autonomy (executive and police power is already curtailed by other human rights laws).

To this end, the first aim of the campaign to abolish the death penalty has to be participation in international agreements that either limit or prohibit its being enforced. In this way, a commitment self-limiting) to not utilize the death penalty is obtained from the contracting parties (states).

Parliamentarians and important public figures must use all the means at their disposal: the agendas of Assemblies in which the problem is included, discussions on foreign affairs, etc., in order to influence government thinking - and policies - in this area.

It is, nevertheless, likely that a certain number of states will continue to not participate in international agreements, for political and traditionalist reasons. By not entering into these international agreements, or world agreements drawn up by the UN, the State maintains its freedom, in that the laws of the above-mentioned agreements require that the state in question at least expresses a desire to be " self-limiting".

There is also a further problem concerning agreements for human rights and the abolition of the death penalty. There are no international law courts to ensure that the human rights treaties are respected within the state, and the task is given to quasi-jurisdictional or administrative structures created by the agreements themselves. Furthermore, apart from the actual ratification of the agreement, a specific ad hoc declaration is also required from the state for the particular structure to carry out its duty in their territory. This international structure could be made more effective, simply by requesting that all states accept it.

Having considered these difficulties, the second aim of the campaign for the abolition of the death penalty must be to help create an international consuetude which sanctions the value of human life as inviolable, inalienable and unassailable, and makes this the supreme and fundamental basis for the entire international system of human rights

This second objective is strictly linked to the first: i.e., increasing the number of states entering into agreements which either limit or prohibit the enforcement of the death penalty. It is a known fact that when a considerable number of states participate in international agreements with conviction, this is taken as evidence that an international consuetude exists.

The establishing of such a consuetude could determine the success of the campaign for the abolition of the death penalty, as this type of law is binding for all the states concerned and, according to international law, prevails over any conflicting state law.

International action must, therefore, be undertaken in order that Governments uphold the "opinio juris" of the consuetude principle of the respect for a right to life by excluding the death penalty from state laws.

In this respect, we could take the first step wherever the death penalty is considered a gross violation of human rights.

In fact, any case of "systematic, grave and widespread" violation of human rights, which the UN defines as "gross violation", can be brought before the Commission of Human Rights, an auxiliary body of the Economic and Social Council of the UN, simply because the State accused of this type of behaviour is a member of the UN (according to procedure no. 1503 of 1970). However, this procedure is not jurisdictional, and merely serves as a warning to the state in question to stop its savage practices.

Consequently, any action undertaken to establish a general principle of international law to ban the death penalty, also means establishing international criminal law, real and proper, which would cover at least some types of criminal behaviour and individuals, removing them from the jurisdiction of the national courts, and appointing international jurisdictional bodies (law courts) to judge the crimes. These law courts could be created with ad hoc protocols to the International Agreements now in force (e.g., International Agreement for Minors).

The proposal of this Campaign is justified, on the one hand, by the national law courts' lack of impartiality in judging certain crimes (e.g., a coup); and, on the other, by the technical difficulties they experience in judging complex cases of organized crime at a transnational level (e.g., international drug-trafficking, arms trafficking, etc.)

The proposal, therefore, consists in putting certain crimes and individuals (e.g., minors) under international rather than state jurisdiction, thus giving the international community greater power, and granting it a legitimate obligation of interference in a state's internal affairs in an area which is the key to, and the basis for, an effective system for the international protection of human rights.