INDEX

Follow the 7th World Congress Against the Death Penalty taking place in Brussels from 26 February to 1st March 2019 on Twitter: #7congressECPM

In addition to the academic debates and workshops, the organizers of the Congress had also prepared a nice surprise, on June 22nd, with the main event of their cultural program, soberly entitled “Living with the death penalty”. This event was hosted by Will Francome, a director involved in anti-death penalty work, and represented the opportunity to let these direct “witnesses” of the capital punishment speak about what brought them to be sentenced to death, their experiences on death row, and mostly the journey of their reintegration upon their release from death row. It also allowed relatives of current or former death row inmates to testify of their own fight, in favor of their family member as well as all the other individuals who had to go through this.

From 21th to 23rd of June, the 6th World Congress against the death penalty took place in Oslo. These three days constituted an opportunity to gather the civil society, the political actors and lawyers worldwide, in order to discuss strategies aiming at abolishing the death penalty around the world. Among the noteworthy debates which were organized during this congress, the roundtable that was dedicated to terrorism (being also the theme of the next World Day against the death penalty, organized by the World Coalition) raised significant issues related to the use of the death penalty while countering terrorism.

In the context of the 6th World Congress Against the Death Penalty, the World Coalition together with Hands Off Cain and Amnesty International co-hosted a side event focusing on the 6th UNGA resolution for a moratorium on the use of the death penalty, whose adoption will be decided in New York in December this year.

While Africa has been the fastest region in abolishing capital punishment in recent years, lawyers from Uganda and Nigeria say they are facing increasing from the authorities to use the death penalty.

The role of lawyers in the fight against the death penalty has been discussed from different angles throughout the 5th World Congress, but the testimony of Chinese lawyers caught most people’s attention.

Although most executions continue to take place in Asia, their number is going down – and abolitionists are coming up with new ideas to bring about abolition.

Recognising the process from sentencing to execution as a form of torture would ensure progress towards abolition in international law as well as in the US.

European Union officials and Belarusian activists denounce Minsk’s lack of political will to tackle the death penalty.

Ending the death penalty means finding replacement sanctions to punish former capital crimes – while taking into accounts human rights standards.