INDEX

On May 23rd, 2016, the closing ceremony of the project “My pencil for abolition” took place at the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This project was organized by the team of “Educating and Raising Awareness on Abolition” in the association Together Against the Death Penalty (ECPM): it consisted in involving a few middle and high school’s classes, from Lorraine, Belfort and the Parisian region, in the elaboration of articles and cartoons in order to create a magazine committed to the abolition of the death penalty, known as the Abolition Mag.

A report describing the socio-economic profiles of death row inmates in India was recently released by the National Law University’s Death Penalty Research Project (based in New Delhi).

In the context of the new project to increase mobilization towards the abolition of the death penalty in Africa, from 15 to 19 April 2016 the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty has been engaged in several important activities in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.Tanzania is a country that still retains the death penalty in its laws though it is abolitionist in practice, the last execution took place in 1994.

On March 20, 2016, a tense presidential election in the Republic of the Congo resulted in the re-election of President Denis Sassou Nguesso, who has been in power for a total of 32 years. One of the election’s least discussed outcomes is its solidification of the new constitution that President Sassou introduced last year and that provides for abolition of the death penalty.

During the 58th Extraordinary Session of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR), the Working Group of the ACHPR on the death penalty in Africa, in partnership with the World Coalition, the FIACAT and the FIDH, organized a panel discussion about the death penalty in Africa, on April 16, 2016.

This report covers the judicial use of the death penalty for the period January to December 2015. As in previous years, information is collected from a variety of sources, including: official figures; information from individuals sentenced to death and their families and representatives; reporting by other civil society organizations; and media reports. Amnesty International reports only on executions, death sentences and other aspects of the use of the death penalty, such as commutations and exonerations, where there is reasonable confirmation.

This 8th annual report (released by Iran Human Rights and Ensemble contre la peine de mort) deals with the number of executions, the trend compared to previous years, the charges, the geographic distribution, as well as the monthly breakdown of the executions in Iran in 2015. These two organizations have been collaborating since 2011, in order to provide annual assessment and analysis of the death penalty trends in Iran. The 2015 report is the result of hard work from IHR members and supporters who took part in the documenting, analyzing and writing of its content.

The Centre on the Death Penalty is keen to develop a robust and rewarding internship programme that will provide meaningful exposure to the complexities and nuances, in particular, of the administration of the death penalty and the criminal justice system in India more generally, therefore the centre introduces internship program where they accept interns on rolling basis.

Even though Taiwanese general mindset appears to be quite in favor of death penalty, Taiwanese civil society expects some changes to happen in the application of death penalty under the presidency of Tsai Ing-wen. In his article “Taiwan: Can Tsai Ing-Wen Change the Politics of Death?”, Michael Caster – graduate student at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, as well as human rights advocate and civil society consultant based in East Asia – quotes Executive Director of the Taiwan Alliance to End the Death Penalty, Lin Hsin-yi, on that controversial matter.

Since the establishment of the Palestinian Authority, in 1994, 172 death sentences have been issued in the territories under its authority, of which 30 in the West Bank and 142 in the Gaza Strip, 87 since Hamas gained the control of the area in 2007. The video points out arguments against the death penalty: it is ineffective, irreversible, against human dignity and it has no deterrence effect as proved by the high criminal rate shared by the countries which use it most. Besides, while the Islamic Law regards it as a right of the relatives of the victim, the Shaaria also supports forgiveness and compensation.