ABSTRACT

Against the Death Penalty: International Initiatives and Implications appears just as the movement to abolish the death penalty worldwide has entered a new and challenging phase. It was marked, as William Schabas points out, by the resolution passed in favour of a world-wide moratorium on executions pending abolition of capital punishment at the plenary session of the United Nations General Assembly in December 2007. A large majority of countries (104) voted in favour, 29 abstained and only 54 stood out against it. This success was, of course, a reflection of the great strides made in persuading countries to abandon the death penalty over the past 20 years. At the end of December 1988, 35 countries had abolished the death penalty completely and a further 17 for all ‘ordinary’ crimes in peacetime: 28 per cent of the 180 countries recognised by the UN. One hundred and one countries (56%) were ‘actively’ retentionist, in that they had carried out at least one judicial execution within the past 10 years. Yet on the 1st January 2008 – a day marked by the complete abolition of capital punishment in Uzbekistan – only 50 of 195 countries were ‘actively retentionist’: just over a quarter of independent nations of the world. Furthermore, 102 of 112 countries that had abolished capital punishment had done so for all crimes, in all circumstances, in peacetime, under threat of war or during military conflict. A further 44 had not executed anyone for at least 10 years or had declared a moratorium. Of these, Amnesty International declares 33 to be truly ‘abolitionist in practice’: the death penalty remaining on their statute books but with no intention of it ever leading to an execution. Put simply, the vote at the UN was a foregone conclusion if all abolitionist and nonexecuting countries pulled together.