INDEX

World Coalition member Amnesty International has released its annual statistics on the death penalty and launched a campaign against capital punishment in Belarus.

Special Rapporteur Manfred Nowak raised the issue at the UN’s Human Rights Council, triggering a debate in which World Coalition member organisations had their say.

New Mexico’s governor Bill Richardson signed the repeal of the death penalty in to law on March 18, 2009, attracting praise from the global abolitionist community.

The World Coalition has sent a letter to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, asking him to “protect its nationals sentenced to death abroad, whether it is in a democratic country or not”.

A new, authoritative study sheds a new light on capital punishment across Asia and may help abolitionists enhance their strategies.

Italy became the 41st state to ratify the 13th Protocol to the European Convention for Human Rights on 3 March 2009.

Nicaragua became the 71th state to ratify the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant for Civil and Politic Rights on 25 February 2009.

United Nations agencies, governments and NGOs criticised Saudi Arabia’s death penalty record at the UN’s universal periodic review of human rights.

Indonesia-based researcher Dave McRae finds that a core group of abolitionists are battling a rise in the number of executions, death sentences and death row inmates in the country.

Vietnamese Justice Minister Ha Hung Cuong has proposed a reduction in the number of capital offences – a demand put forward by the World Coalition’s demands on World Day Against the Death Penalty.