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Death penalty ‘has no place in our world’, says IBAHRI
Marking the 20th World Day against the Death Penalty, the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute (IBAHRI) issues a global call to action for the abolition of the death penalty.
Keonia Swift
This year’s theme is “Death Penalty: A Road Paved with Torture”. Highlighting the link between the use of the death penalty and torture or other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment, such as torture and ill-treatment during interrogations to get a forced confession to a capital crime and harsh conditions that cause a person’s physical and mental health to get worse.
“We call on states that retain capital punishment to join the global shift towards abolition by issuing an immediate moratorium on its use and by ratifying the Second Optional Protocol to the ICCPR, article 1 of which prohibits executions and obliges States Parties to take all necessary measures to abolish the death penalty.
“Pending this, we call on states to strictly observe the international legal limitations on its application, progressively restrict its imposition and the crimes to which it applies and ensure the right to a fair trial for defendants, including the non-admissibility of forced confessions and access to effective legal representation at all stages of capital cases, without distinction of any kind.”
In its General Comment No. 36, the UN Human Rights Committee noted that putting someone to death after breaking Article 14 of the ICCPR’s guarantees of a fair trial and due process would make the sentence arbitrary and violate the right to life.
The IBAHRI said that this includes not being able to get good legal help and using forced confessions. As the Principles on Effective Interviewing for Investigations and Information Gathering (Méndez principles) points out, forced confessions aren’t reliable and can lead to wrongful convictions and miscarriages of justice.
According to the United Nations Secretary General’s 2022 report, people were given death sentences between July 2020 and June 2022 for various reasons, including allegations of torture and a lack of due process and fair trial guarantees.
“The IBAHRI calls on prosecutors and judges to rigorously respect and implement the exclusionary rule to ensure that torture-tainted evidence is not admitted in court proceedings,” IBAHRI co-chair Mark Stephens CBE stated.
“We further call on states to guarantee the independence of the legal profession in line with the UN Basic Principles on the Role of Lawyers and the IBA Standards for the Independence of the Legal Profession to prevent miscarriages of justice with the gravest of consequences and to investigate all allegations of torture and ill-treatment in line with international law and standards, including the updated Istanbul Protocol (2022).
“Also, the right to effective legal representation must be applicable at all stages of the criminal justice process in capital punishment cases, from initial detention to post-conviction pardon or clemency proceedings.”
