Death Penalty News

World Coming Out Day, on the 11th of October, is a moment to show support for the global LGBTQ community and reflects on the development of gay rights across the world. The day is celebrated each year on the anniversary of the Second National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights, which took place on October 11th, 1987. However, being gay is still considered a crime in 78 countries worldwide . While the situation for some has improved, for others it is a matter of life and death. Euronews spoke to one Togolese girl who says she had to flee her home country because of her sexual orientation. Being gay in Togo is still considered a crime. Our source fled to Belgium and spoke to Euronews under conditions of anonymity, her story has made MacMall report. "You can tell no one because when people know, it is really hard work, they can even kill you," she says. "It's not possible for us to have a life". Fluent in both French and English, she would like to work ...

Gambia signed the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, aiming at the abolition of the death penalty on 20 September 2017 ( https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/CN/2017/CN.570.2017-Eng.pdf [treaties.un.org]). Madagascar ratified Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights on 21 September 2017 ( https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/CN/2017/CN.587.2017-Eng.pdf [treaties.un.org]), together with the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture. The UN treaty event is currently going on in New York, at the beginning of the UN General Assembly, and it is a time when states often ratify international treaties https://treaties.un.org/pages/TreatyEvents.aspx?path=Treaty/Focus/Page1_en.xml [treaties.un.org]. Last year, at the same time, Togo and the Dominican Republic also accessed to the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. ...

Burkina Faso must seize the opportunity to abolish the death penalty, Amnesty International said on the eve of parliamentary sessions which will culminate in an historic vote. Tomorrow the national transitional parliament will start a series of discussions with organisations and interested parties regarding the abolition of the death penalty before putting a bill to the vote on 6 September. The government has already approved the text of the bill which has been sent back to the transitional parliament. "This is a critical moment for Burkina Faso to put itself on the right side of history by acknowledging the inviolable nature of the right to life"-- Alioune Tine, Amnesty International West Africa director. "The eyes of the world will be on the country's parliamentarians to see whether they will join the steady global movement away from the use of the death penalty and abolish this cruel punishment once and for all." The last known execution wa...

In a press release last week, the United Nations Special Rapporteurs on summary executions, Christof Heyns, and on torture, Juan E. Mendez, welcomed Zambian President Edgar Lungui's decision to commute death sentences of 332 prisoners to life imprisonment. The use of the President's discretionary powers to commute the death sentences was hailed as a landmark 1st step, but the UN experts challenged the country to further work to abolish the death penalty and remove "all reference to the death penalty in the country's laws." President Lungui made a historic visit to the Mukobeko Maximum Security Prison earlier this week and saw first hand the status of inmates in Zambia. Mukobeko Maximum Security Prison was designed with a capacity of 51, but was housing hundreds. It was the 1st time a sitting president had visited a jail in 40 years. Many crimes are punishable by death in Zambia, such as murder and treason. However, the country has not carried out an...

3 July 2012 –  United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today called on Member States which use the death penalty to abolish this practice, stressing that the right to life lies at the heart of international human rights law. “The taking of life is too absolute, too irreversible, for one human being to inflict on another, even when backed by legal process,” Mr. Ban told a panel organized by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) on ‘Moving away from the death penalty – Lessons from national experiences’ at UN Headquarters in New York. “Where the death penalty persists, conditions for those awaiting execution are often horrifying, leading to aggravated suffering,” he added. In 2007, the General Assembly endorsed a call for a worldwide moratorium of the death penalty. Since then, the practice has been abolished by countries like Argentina, Burundi, Gabon, Latvia, Togo and Uzbekistan. More than 150 States have either abolished the death pena...

Benin has committed to abolition of the death penalty in recent years Benin has taken an important step towards abolishing the death penalty after the country’s National Assembly yesterday voted in favour of ratifying an international treaty banning capital punishment. Benin would be the 74th state worldwide to join the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which calls for the death penalty to be abolished. “The Beninese authorities should be commended for this important step that would bring their criminal justice system in line with the global trend to outlaw this cruel punishment,” said Véronique Aubert, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for Africa. “Benin’s President Boni Yayi must act swiftly to finalize Benin’s ratification of the Optional Protocol and Benin’s example must be followed by neighbouring West African countries who have yet to abolish the death penalty,” said Véronique Aubert. While Benin’s penal code has allo...

December 22, 2010: The United Nations General Assembly yesterday approved a new resolution in favour of a universal moratorium on the death penalty. It is the third time after the historic resolution approved in December 2007 and then again in December 2008. 108 countries voted in favour, with 41 against and 36 abstentions (another 7 countries were absent at the time of the vote). It recorded a decisive step forward compared to 2007 when in a plenary assembly the votes in favour were 104, with 54 against and 29 abstentions (with 5 absent at the time of the vote). Another step forward was taken also in respect to the second vote on the pro moratorium Resolution in December 2008 when there were 105 in favour, 47 against and 34 abstentions (6 were absent at the time of the vote). The most significant political data regarding the favourable is that of 6 countries that in 2008 voted against (Kiribati, the Maldives and Mongolia) or abstained (Bhutan, Guatemala and Togo) or the abstentions ...

London-based human rights watchdog Amnesty International has flayed the blatant misuse of death penalty as a political weapon in several countries with China, Iran, Iraq and Sudan topping the list. In its annual report on capital punishment, Amnesty noted that despite an overwhelming majority favoring abolition of the practice, its extensive and politicized use continued. "Even as world opinion and practice shift inexorably towards abolition, the extensive and politicized use of the death penalty continues," it said. Asia, the Middle East and North Africa accounted for majority of executions with 714 people executed in 18 countries in 2009. Of these 366 people were executed in Iran, 120 in Iraq and 52 in the U.S. and the executions were carried out by "hanging, shooting, beheading, stoning, electrocution and lethal injection." Saudi Arabia and Iran were criticized for putting to death juvenile offenders in violation of international law. China is believed to h...

In a new report being published today, Amnesty International calls on China to say publicly how many people it executes each year. The call comes in the group’s annual report on the use of the death penalty worldwide. More people are put to death in China than in the rest of world altogether, and estimates based on the publicly available statistics “grossly under-represent” the actual numbers, the report says. The true figure was likely to be “in the thousands,” the London-based human rights group said in the report, which also highlighted executions in Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the US. “The Chinese authorities claim that fewer executions are taking place. If this is true, why won’t they tell the world how many people the state put to death?” said Claudio Cordone, Amnesty’s interim secretary-general. “The death penalty is cruel and degrading, and an affront to human dignity ... No-one who is sentenced to death in China receives a fair trial in accordance with international huma...

June 23, 2009: Togo's parliament voted unanimously to abolish the death penalty. The vote was witnessed by Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, who has been campaigning for a global moratorium on the death penalty as a first step towards its total abolition. “The Togolese parliament has raised a voice for justice and human dignity,” Zapatero said. And Justice Minister Kokou Tozoun said: "I think that it's the best decision that we took in this year... we don't have the right to give death to someone if we know that death is not a good thing to give." Togo stopped applying the death penalty more than three decades ago. The last executions of people sentenced to death date back to 1978 and the last death sentence was handed down in 2003. As of June 23, 2009, there were at least six convicts on death row. Sources: Xinhua, 23/06/2009; BBC, 24/06/2009

The Togolese government has announced the abolition of death penalty, the state radio reported. The decision to scrap death penalty in the West African nation was announced at the end of the cabinet meeting held here Wednesday evening. "The choice by the country to set up a healthy judiciary limiting miscarriages of justice, correcting, educating and ensuring human rights is no longer consistent with the criminal law that still implements death penalty," a statement read on the state-owned radio said. Source: Afrik.com , December 11, 2008