INDEX

This report addresses Uganda’s compliance with its obligations under the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women with respect to the death penalty. The report examines and discusses Ugandan death penalty laws and cases where women are sentenced to death row in Uganda, primarily for murder.

This report recommends that Uganda adopt a number of key recommendations to better align its death penalty practices with Uganda’s obligations to women under the Convention. These steps, among other things, include: (1) abolishing the death penalty and in the interim, limiting the death penalty to only the most serious crimes of intentional killing of another human; (2) ensuring proper gender-sensitive training in the judicial system and protecting women in conflict with the law when gender-based violence is involved; (3) developing and implementing programs to prevent gender-based violence and discrimination; and (4) ensuring fair access to counsel to women sentenced to death or at risk of being sentenced to death.

• Document type NGO report / World Coalition
• Countries list Uganda
• Themes list Women

This report addresses Lebanon’s compliance with human rights obligations under the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women regarding its use of the death penalty.

Lebanon has not abolished the death penalty or established a de jure moratorium on the death penalty. The legal system does not protect women in conflict with the law from discrimination on the basis of sex or gender. Nor does it limit capital offenses to the “most serious” crimes.

Women migrant domestic workers appear to be at an elevated risk of being sentenced to death. Indeed, all three women known to be on death row in Lebanon are Sri Lankan migrant domestic workers. Such women face heightened obstacles to realizing their right to a fair trial. Moreover, there is no evidence that sentencing authorities take into account a woman’s history of abuse when determining an appropriate sentence. Finally, women under sentence of death face degrading conditions of detention.

• Document type NGO report / World Coalition
• Countries list Lebanon
• Themes list Women

Is the death penalty “natural” or sometimes legally due?
If not, is the death penalty always a political instrument?
If so, how and why can it be said that the death penalty is unjust, also considering religious values?
What about in case of war time or of very dangerous criminals?
In which way can there be an irrefutable argument for banning the death penalty worldwide and forever?

These and other issues concerning the death penalty are addressed by the Author of this book.
A book, where the most common theories for and against the death penalty are considered in the light of law history and philosophical views, and where Cesare Beccaria’s approach is revised, taking into account the development of the contemporary criminal law and of the legal positivism.

This is an essay, where the protection of humanity is not considered simply as a hope or as a naive dream, but rather as a juridical concept, absolutely necessary to understand one of most tragic questions of all time: “is it just to kill those who killed?”

• Document type Book

• Document type World Coalition

This tip sheet provides some guidelines for mental health professionals who may encounter or work with children and families related to individuals who have been sentenced to death or executed.

• Document type Working with...
• Themes list Juveniles

The Commission on Human Rights of the Philippines issues this advisory to bring the Philippines’ attention to the heightened vulnerabilities of women Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs).

• Document type Government body report
• Countries list Philippines
• Themes list Drug Offenses / Legal Representation / Women
• Available languages Avis sur la vulnérabilité accrue des travailleuses migrantes dans le couloir de la mort

Foreign nationals, and within this group migrant workers, are a population that disproportionately faces the death penalty around the world. The data and statistics gathered by Reprieve and Migrant CARE for this report show that migrant workers as a sub-set of the foreign national population are at grave risk of human rights violations related to the death penalty, including arbitrary deprivation of the right to life in the context of unlawful death sentences and executions.

This report focuses on: states that receive migrant workers (‘receiving states’), in particular the states that make up the Association of South East Asian Nations or ASEAN (‘South East Asian states’) and the Gulf Cooperation Council (‘Gulf states’), and on states from which migrant workers travel to work (‘sending states’).

• Document type NGO report
• Countries list Indonesia / Malaysia / Nigeria / Pakistan / Saudi Arabia
• Themes list Fair Trial / Legal Representation / Women

As of 2020, blasphemy was formally criminalised in some 84 countries. As many as 21 countries criminalised apostasy as of 2019. The legal penalties for such offences range from fines to imprisonment to corporal punishment—and in at least 12 countries, the death penalty.

This report examines the extent to which States commit, or are complicit in, killings that violate religious freedom. Focussing on the 12 States in which offences against religion are lawfully punishable by death, we examine four different types of State-sanctioned killings on the basis of religious offence (apostasy, blasphemy, or alike) or affiliation (most commonly, membership of a religious minority): judicial executions, extrajudicial killings, killings by civilians, and killings by extremist groups. We explore the relationship between the retention of the death penalty for religious offences and other forms of State-sanctioned killings motivated by alleged religious offending or by religious identity.

• Document type Academic report
• Countries list Brunei Darussalam / Iran (Islamic Republic of) / Maldives / Mauritania / Nigeria / Qatar / Saudi Arabia / Somalia / United Arab Emirates / Yemen

The People’s Republic of China no doubt leads the world in both numbers of death sentences and executions. Despite being the largest user of the death penalty, China has never conducted a national poll on citizens’ opinions toward capital punishment, while claiming “overwhelming public support” as a major justification for its retention and use. Based on a content analysis of 38,512 comments collected from 63 cases in 2015, this study examines the diversity and rationales of netizens’ opinions of and interactions with China’s criminal justice system. In addition, the book discusses China’s social, systemic, and structural problems and critically examines the rationality of netizens’ opinions based on Habermas’s communicative rationality framework. Readers will be able to contextualize Chinese netizens’ discussions and draw conclusions about commonalities and uniqueness of China’s death penalty practice.

• Document type Academic report
• Countries list China
• Themes list Public Opinion

In observation of the 2021 World Day Against the Death Penalty dedicated to women, Iran Human Rights is providing a report on the women executed in Iran over the last 12 years (2010-2021). The executions in this period are by no means representative of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s complete history of executing women; the number of female political prisoners executed in the 1980s must be acknowledged due to their sheer volume and abhorrent nature. But even today, there is ample evidence of their cruel and inhuman treatment of female prisoners, which will be highlighted in this report.

• Document type NGO report
• Countries list Iran (Islamic Republic of)
• Themes list Women