Message from Mary Robinson,
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to the Conference organized by the Hands Off Cain on Abolition of the Death Penalty

Monday, 23 March 1998


Ladies and Gentlemen,

In February this year, I spoke on my sadness at learning of the death by lethal injection if Karla Faye Tucker who was put to death for murders she committed 15 years ago. It was the first execution of a woman in the state of Texas since 1863 and the first in the United States since 1984. Her death attracted appeals for clemency from around the world and refocused international concern on the increasing use of the death penalty in that country and in a number of others. But every week, I read new reports of judicially-sanctioned death by injection, gunfire or gas asphyxiation, public executions, executions of women or of minors. This distressing trend runs counter to the international community’s expressed desire for the abolition of the death penalty . Although not absolutely proscribed in international human rights law, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights as well as the American and European Conventions on Human Rights all have additional protocols providing for the abolition of capital punishment. The Covenant itself is explicit that the death penalty should be used in only the most serious cases and that capital sentences may only be pronounced after trials in which all guarantees of due process were scrupulously observed.

As far back as 1971 the United Nations General Assembly called on states to progressively restrict use of the death penalty with a view to its abolition. Last year, the Commission on Human Rights called on states which have not yet abolished the death penalty to consider suspending executions with a view to its complete abolition. When I visit countries which still use the death penalty, I urge the government to review the practice with a view to limiting its use and to consider accession to the Second Optional Protocol of the Covenant. Over the years, UN human rights treaty bodies have used their respective procedures in a - mostly successful - endeavour to limit any State’s resort to capital punishment. My own views on the death penalty are reflected in the opening declaration of the Second Protocol which states with complete clarity that: “abolition of the death penalty contributes to enhancement of human dignity and progressive development of human rights”. I have full sympathy for the families of the victims of murder and other crimes but I do not accept that one death justifies another. There are encouraging signs in that each year a few more countries demonstrate through practice or legislation their intention to discard the use of capital punishment. Abolition has become widespread in Europe, Latin America, in parts of Eastern Europe and, I am pleased to note, there are positive trends emerging from Africa.

While recognizing that the issue of capital punishment arouses strong emotions on all sides, I would caution that progress towards its abolition will be made through calm, rigorous and consistent lobbying and by increasing public awareness that life itself is the most fundamental of human rights.