(WORLDWIDE PARLIAMENTARY CAMPAIGN FOR THE ABOLITION OF THE DEATH PENALTY BY THE YEAR 200 - Radical party/International League for the abolition of the death penalty by the year 2000)

In effect, we already have. At a certain point in the history of man, a new right was affirmed, which supplanted traditions and constitutions, social and economic systems, and

deeply-rooted beliefs and prejudices. Slavery disappeared from society according to a process that could be applied to abolishing the death penalty today.

The first movement for the abolition of slavery was formed in England in 1787 and, seven years later, slavery was abolished in the French Colonies with the Convention. While enslavement was widely condemned in Europe between 1800 and 1875, Islamized regions of Africa still continued with their slave trade. This inhuman practice was abolished in the Northern U.S. at the beginning of the nineteenth century; neverthless, 350,000 white families in the Southern U.S. still owned a grand total of 3,000,000 slaves in 1860. Five years later, the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolished slavery once and for all!

Today, the great majority of countries that belong to the U.N. still maintain the death penalty, with only half of them actually carrying it out. The U.S., one of the oldest democracies in the world, is amongst them. The majority of public opinion is often in favour of maintaining the death penalty or bringing it back. The conflicts and hatred bequeathed by the former Soviet Union and the ex-Yugoslavia to the people within their confines; the unitarian intolerance and the rebellion waged by the disinherited and the hungry of this world; the totalitarian prohibitionism of today's society and the criminal violence it provokes and also feeds, will result in the death penalty looming large on the horizon in the immediate future. It will no longer be merely something left over from the past, but will be used as a possible instrument for "dealing with" new emergencies, which will certainly not be confined to a settlement of accounts. Then there are thousand-year-old traditions, cultures and deeply-ingrained religi

ous beliefs that legitimize provisions for the death penalty in the laws of the community and of the State. It often happens that whoever applies the death penalty to deal with impunity and unlawfulness is motivated by a profound sense of "justice". In this situation, it is necessary to apply an abolitionist rather than a prohibitionist strategy, which does not seek to label people as either "civilized" or "uncivilized"; and which takes into consideration every new development regarding human rights and the law in this area.

Our "World parliamentary Campaign to Abolish the Death Penalty by 2000" does not intend to focus on the obvious contradiction between the death penalty and "a right to life" which has been reaffirmed in many resolutions passed by the U.N. General Assembly. Instead, we want to see a new individual right incorporated into the fundamental texts of individual States and the International Community: an historicized civil right, symbolic of human progress. At the dawn of the new millenium, the right not to be killed following a sentence or a judicial measure must constitute an expression of historical awareness; a necessity not only for every individual but also for our society and our times. We want to help to develop this new awareness, which could give birth to a new universal law.

To abolish the death penalty, all we need to do is reform the penal system - just as we did when it came to abolishing slavery and prohibiting torture. A penal system which establishes the degree of inviolability of an individual's rights - which exists simply because it has been confirmed by law. It is a question of establishing "an irreducible human value", as Boutros Ghali said at the Vienna Conference, which will make us all "a single human family."

The Resolution. passed by the U.N. Security Council, which provides for the setting up of an International Court to try war crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia, is the first step in creating this new positive law: the Court's statute stipulates that the accused will be punished according to the laws of the respective countries, but also specifies that there will be no recourse to the death penalty. The International League for the Abolition of the Death Penalty by 2000 will be founded December next, at the World Congress to be held at the European Parliament in Brussels. We look forward to seeing you there with a view to discussing this crucial issue.