HERALD TRIBUNE - NOVEMBRE 1999

by Emma Bonino

There are significant parallels between our campaign for the abolition of the death penalty and the battle to defeat cancer. Like everyone involved in cancer research, we know that we are getting closer to achieving our aim. They know that the scientific goals that will save people from cancer are now in sight; similarly, we can now foresee the political and juridical developments that will save people from the macabre ritual of execution. However, we are both well aware that our long-awaited goals might once again recede if we lose the backing of the general public, or if we ourselves make any serious mistakes.

In the next few weeks, the General Assembly of the United Nations will discuss and vote on a resolution presented by the 15 countries of the European Union, and signed by 74 countries from all continents, which proposes a universal moratorium on executions. If the resolution were approved, we would still not have reached our goal, because a moratorium is not the same as abolition, and also because UN resolutions are not binding for member states. However, it would be a great victory all the same, because it would testify to the awareness, on the part of the international community, that the application of the death penalty contrasts with the principles of the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Man. And so the adoption of the universal moratorium would allow all countries to "assimilate the new development" and draw the necessary consequences.

It has taken years of hard work by the pro-abolition movement Hands Off Cain, founded in Italy in 1993 and backed by an increasing number of organizations and governments, to pose the question in these terms. All over the world, it has had to engage in diplomatic, juridical, ideological and cultural struggles, leading last April to the vote in Geneva with which the Human Rights Committee of the United Nations gave its support to the European proposal (30 votes in favor, 11 against - including China and the United States - and 14 abstentions). "The abolition of the death penalty," reads the resolution, "contributes to the raising of human dignity and to the progressive development of human rights."

The supporters of capital punishment, still practiced with varying frequency in 72 countries, know - whatever the nature of the governments they represent - that they have been defeated at an ethical and juridical level. They also know, however, that the unstoppable advance of the pro-abolition movement can still be delayed by shifting the issue onto the treacherous terrain of procedural traps or by confusing it with geo-political tensions, ideological debates, or the debates on the so-called cultural relativism that characterize the troubled relations between the North and the South of the world.

"Interference" is the key word for the advocates of capital punishment. "Do not accept interference" is the impassible line they wave at their opponents, accusing us explicitly of wanting to impose the priorities, rules and values of Western Europe on the whole world.

Aware of this trap, pro-abolitionists must proclaim loud and clear that to put an end to legalized homicide is an objective in itself; like the abolition of slavery, torture or racial discrimination, it is not part of any strategy except that of protecting human dignity, a strategy that regards the whole of mankind.

The objective we are fighting for is to stop the hand of the executioner. We are not so megalomaniacal or foolish as to think that our campaign can determine the outcome of the epoch-making challenges posed by the gap between North and South, by political and religious fundamentalism, or by the longevity of the "Beijing Wall" compared to the Berlin Wall.

Having said that, it would be pointless to deny that in the contemporary world there is a problem of growing "interference" by the international community, in defense of values and principles accepted as universal, towards countries that scorn such values and principles. Whose fault is it? On one hand it is the fault of the 1948 Universal Declaration of the Rights of Man itself (whose approval was not forced on any of the countries that signed it); on the other hand of globalization, which may be loved or hated, but which is undoubtedly inevitable. It would really be too much if we managed to globalize everything, from the labor market to the IT society, except the consciences and the rights of men.