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Last Updated: Feb 6, 2017 - 2:32:04 PM |
The
Organization of American States (OAS) marked World Day against the
Death Penalty with a Policy Roundtable on worldwide efforts to eradicate
capital punishment titled, “How much longer until the universal
abolition of the death penalty?”
The 46th Policy Roundtable was organized by the OAS Secretariat
for Legal Affairs and the Permanent Observer Mission of France to the
hemispheric organization, and took place at the headquarters of the OAS
in Washington, DC.
The Secretary for External Relations of the OAS, Alfonso
Quiñonez, opened the session with a presentation in which he reported
that “capital punishment is still practiced in more than fifty
countries” around the world, but also highlighted the progress made
recently toward its elimination. “Since 2007 the General Assembly of the
United Nations has approved each year a resolution supporting a
moratorium on the use of the death penalty, and several countries have
suspended executions, which constitutes a first step toward the
abolition of capital punishment,” he said.
Ambassador Quiñonez recalled that the American Declaration on
the Rights and Duties of Man consecrates “the right to life, liberty and
security of person.” Similarly, he said, the American Convention on
Human Rights “adopts the required provisions to definitively limit” the
application of the death penalty.
“The process toward the abolition of the death penalty demands,
obviously, an unending and decisive commitment, but also, reflection,”
said Secretary Quiñonez. “In that sense, we want to continue, as an
organization, to reinforce our commitments in the name of the values we
share, in our duty to confer dignity on the human condition.”
The Roundtable included a panel discussion moderated by the
Secretary of Legal Affairs of the OAS, Jean Michel Arrighi, in which the
Executive Secretary of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights
(IACHR), Emilio Álvarez Icaza; the Permanent Observer of France to the
OAS, Pierre-Henri Guignard; and the Associate Dean for International and
Comparative Legal Studies of the George Washington Law School, Susan
Karamanian took part.
The Executive Secretary of the IACHR highlighted that “the death
penalty is the limit, the extreme in terms of the use of force by the
state.” He recalled the report compiled by the IACHR in December of last
year,“the Death Penalty in the Inter-American System of Human Rights: from restrictions to abolition,”which
represents a systematic analysis of what is happening in the Americas
with respect to the issue. Álvarez Icaza emphasized that the IACHR has
“a complementary role” in the acceleration of the process toward
abolition, because in the end the “internal bodies” of the states
themselves are the “primary responsible agencies” that must generate any
process of transformation. In conclusion, the Executive Secretary said
that “what must not happen is for the state to confuse justice with
vengeance. The democratic rule of law must generate a condition to
achieve and administer justice, not to achieve and administer
vengeance.”
The Permanent Observer of France to the OAS, Ambassador
Pierre-Henri Guignard, reported that yesterday in Paris, the Foreign
Minister of France, Laurent Fabius, “launched a campaign for the
universal abolition of the death penalty.” The French diplomat said that
the “deterrent value” of the death penalty “is a myth” and said there
was no connection between this type of punishment and a reduction in
criminality. “Our objective,” he said, “is to promote the total and
universal abolition of the death penalty as an inefficient,
irreversible, and inhumane punishment that cannot be justified.”
Susan Karamanian, Associate Dean of George Washington
University, said that, although the United States still practices the
death penalty, ”since the 1999 peak, there’s been a fairly steady
decline.” “With the decline in executions there is a belief, a tentative
one I think, that a shameful era may be coming to a close.” But it is
important to note, she said that the decline in the use of the death
penalty does not reflect “a fundamental opposition to the death penalty,
but they show problems with the process. I do believe that there is a
sense in Americans of basic fairness and I think many Americans
understand that the process has defied that expectation.”
During the debate, the Permanent Representatives to the OAS from
Mexico, Ecuador and Dominica, as well as the Permanent Observer of
Spain to the organization and the Ambassador of the Arab League in
Washington, DC also took part.
For more information, please visit the OAS Website at www.oas.org.
© Copyright 2012 by thebahamasweekly.com
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