INDEX

Fifteen capital defense lawyers from eight African countries arrived at Cornell Law School on June 12 to begin eight days of training on how best to represent death penalty clients in the first session of the Makwanyane Institute.

Despite Africa’s march towards abolition, considered by many as the next abolitionist continent, Cameroon continues to withstand the abolitionist trend. Cameroon is the biggest executioner among French speaking countries in Africa, and the seventh country – on a global scale – with the largest number of death sentences: 160 in 2016, according to Amnesty International.

At the invitation of its American members, the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty is holding its 15th general meeting at The Catholic University of America in Washington D.C., USA on 22-24 June 2017.

Organized by the National Algerian Committee in partnership with the Boumerdes bar association, a seminar on the death penalty took place the 28th and 29th of April in Algeria. Gathering mainly academics, lawyers and representatives of the civil society, this seminar had the ambition to contribute to the “long process for the final abolition of the death penalty in Algeria”. The World Coalition Against the Death Penalty was represented by Florence Bellivier, Deputy Secretary General of the International Federation of the Leagues of Human Rights (FIDH).

The work of the 60th ordinary sessions of the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights (ACHPR) took place in Niger between the 8th and the 22th of May. Invited by SYNAFEN, one of its members, the World Coalition took this opportunity to gather in the margins of the ACHPR session.

On Tuesday, April 18th 2017, Together Against the Death Penalty (ECPM) held an award ceremony at the City Hall of Paris for their “Educational Project on Human Rights and the Abolition of the Death Penalty”.

Amnesty International published its 2016 global review of the death penalty on Tuesday, April 11th 2017.Excluding China, states around the world executed 1,032 people in 2016. China executed more than all other countries in the world put together, while the USA reached a historic low in its use of the death penalty in 2016.

The 9th annual report by Iran Human Rights (IHR)and ECPM (Ensemble contre la peine de mort) on the death penalty in Iran shows that in 2016 at least 530 people were executed in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Although this number is significantly lower than the annual execution numbers from the past five years, Iran remained the country with the highest number of executions per capita.

In March 2017, the 60th Commission on Narcotic Drugs annual meeting in Vienna took place. During this meeting, governments have been encouraged to “promote proportionate national sentencing policies for drug-related offences”. The death penalty was addressed during several side events.

Since the November 2013 elections, the Maldives have been moving towards the adoption of severe legal measures. On April, 27th 2014, the government decided to put an end to a 60-year moratorium.The civil society of Maldives is mobilizing against this worrying situation.