INDEX

A conference to launch the project SALI: Saving Lives, was held in Abuja, Nigeria, on 27 March. It marked the start of the project activities while encouraging discussions on the issue of the death penalty in Nigeria.

Lawmakers in the US State of Connecticut have abolished capital punishment and the State’s governor has said that he would sign the bill into law. Elizabeth Zitrin of the US NGO Death Penalty Focus chairs the World Coalition’s working group on the United States. She writes on the significance of this news for the wider abolitionist movement.

ECPM (Together against the death penalty) and CPJ (Culture for Peace and Justice) organized a conference in late March on strategies for abolition at the regional level. The Congolese government has reaffirmed its commitment to abolish the death penalty.

In a new report, Amnesty International analyses some of the key developments in the worldwide application of the death penalty, citing figures it has gathered on the number of death sentences handed down and executions carried out in 2011.

The ratification campaign for the international protocols on the death penalty is on a roll with three new ratifications since January.

Iran Human Rights has published its annual report on the death penalty in Iran in 2011. IHR’s international spokesperson Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam says the Iranian authorities are keeping the number of executions high because they use the death penalty as a political tool.

The Iraqi institutions established after the US-led invasion and the fall of Saddam Hussein have reinstated the death penalty and extended its scope since 2004. In this op-ed article, Iraqi Coalition Against the Death Penalty president Nassr Abood calls for alternative sentences and for a strong stance from the international community.

After one year without executions, the Japanese government looks set to resume state killings. The Center for Prisoners’ Rights, a World Coalition member organisation, has launched an urgent petition to reverse the trend.

On 20 December 2011 the European Commission added sodium thiopental to the list of goods that are subject to tight export controls to ensure they do not find their way into overseas death chambers.

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, […]