All about Mental Illness

Avec peu d’exécutions mais l’un des plus grands couloirs de la mort au monde, l’Asie du Sud est à la croisée des chemins. Des publications récentes explorent la santé mentale des personnes condamnées à mort et leur contexte social et économique au Bangladesh, en Inde, aux Maldives, au Pakistan et au Sri Lanka.

With few executions but one of the biggest death rows in the world, South Asia is at a crossroad. Recent publications explore mental health on death row and social and economic background of people sentenced to death in Bangladesh, India, the Maldives, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

Asil Abuassba, a Palestinian intern with World Coalition member organisation The Advocates for Human Rights, attended a training session to help global activists submit reports on the death penalty situation in their countries to UN bodies.

The Malawi Human Rights Commission (MHRC) held a two-day seminar on mental health evaluations in preparation for the resentencing of nearly 200 individuals after their mandatory death sentences were deemed unconstitutional.

The number of executions in the United States was at its lowest in 20 years and seven death row prisoners were exonerated in 2014.

The 12th World Day Against the Death Penalty was marked by hundreds of actions on all continents, in the media and online.

Twelve governments from countries with and without capital punishment release a joint declaration calling for a world that “respects human dignity” on World Day Against the Death Penalty.

Despite international and national standards banning the use of capital punishment against mental ill or intellectually disabled people, health professionals familiar with death row say it is full of prisoners who should instead be receiving treatment.

World Coalition member organisation Ensemble contre la peine de mort (ECPM) was at September’s Fête de l’Humanité in Paris to spread awareness of the 12th World Day Against the Death Penalty on October 10.

On 10 October 2014, the 12th World Day Against the Death Penalty is drawing attention to people with mental health problems who are at risk of a death sentence or execution. Browse the schedule and the map to prepare and promote the events planned around the world on the big day.

The World Coalition has redesigned its online library to help visitors find the documents they need in its multilingual database of resources and campaigning tools on capital punishment.

On 21 January, India’s Supreme Court formally banned the execution of mentally ill prisoners and in doing so highlighted why this year’s World Day against the Death Penalty, which is dedicated to issues of mental health, is so important.

Through engagement with members of Parliament, the publication of an unprecedented report on death row conditions and the launch of a new website, the Moroccan abolitionist movement is entering a new dimension.

An appeal signed by local organizations and a new report by Amnesty International denounce multiple human rights violations in the use of capital punishment in the region and ask governments to “remove the death penalty once and for all from the law books”.

Over the last few decades, we have made great strides toward the universal abolition of the death penalty.  Nevertheless, despite the progress we have made, the death penalty remains entrenched in a significant number of states.  And even in those nations that have refrained from carrying out executions in a sort of de facto moratorium, […]

On 10.10.10, the 8th World Day against the Death Penalty focused on ending the use of the death penalty in the United States of America. Since 2003, abolitionists have taken actions all over the world every 10 October to raise awareness and opposition to the death penalty.

A few days out from the World Day Against the Death Penalty, California has decided not to resume executions. A shortage of one of the drugs used for lethal injections gives death row inmates and abolitionists more time to continue the legal battle.

European Union support to human rights projects is a well-known fact. Abolitionist organizations are among its beneficiaries.

Kathy Brown, an English IT specialist, is not the typical anti-death penalty campaigner. She is not an NGO-registered lawyer nor a political science student. But through the internet, she has become active in the global abolitionist community.

Juveniles and the mentally ill face a higher risk of falling victims to the death penalty. Abolitionists and activists defending their rights have teamed up to highlight this situation.

Bitter criticism has been targeting China since the execution of British national Akmal Shaikh in the Chinese province of Xinjiang on December 29 after he was found guilty of transporting drugs.

As legal efforts and economic woes weighed in against the death penalty, fewer Americans were sent to death row in 2009 than any other year since the restoration of capital punishment in the US in 1976.

Spanish President José Luis Zapatero attended the international abolitionist colloquium during which the Academic Network against the Death Penalty was launched.

The Japanese government continues to execute prisoners with psychiatric illnesses and the conditions on death row provoke mental disorders among inmates, according to a new Amnesty International report.

Murder Victims’ Families for Human Rights and the National Alliance on Mental Illness slam the use of capital punishment against mentally ill people in the United States.

On June 2, 2009, the 200th execution authorized by governor Rick Perry took place in Texas. Protests were scheduled from Huntsville to Paris to denounce the death penalty situation in the southern US state.

Two leading American grassroots organisations have come together to raise awareness about the execution of mentally ill defendants.

The majority of executions take place in Asia. But this is also the continent where campaigners have developed a fantastic regional abolitionist network, one that reaches across borders, languages and religions.