Prince Zeid calls for abolishing death penalty

AMMAN — UN High Commissioner for Human Rights HH Prince Zeid has called on all countries that still apply the death penalty to abolish capital punishment.

At a high-level meeting on Moving Away from the Death Penalty: National Leadership, held on the sidelines of the 69th Session of the General Assembly in New York on Thursday, Prince Zeid said putting someone to death is degrading and cruel in more than one sense, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported. 

And, in practice, it is often discriminatory in respect of the condemned, disproportionately affecting the poor, the mentally ill, the powerless and minorities, he noted. 

Prince Zeid added that capital punishment is still used in several countries for offences that do not meet the threshold of “most serious crimes” and follows trials that clearly violate human rights standards for fair trials, noting that no judiciary, anywhere in the world, is so robust that it can guarantee that innocent life will not be taken. 

The UN official said there is an alarming body of evidence to indicate that even well-functioning legal systems have sentenced to death men and women who were subsequently proven innocent.

Prince Zeid urged countries that continue to apply the death penalty to increase their technical cooperation with the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights with regard to possible ways to abolish it. 

He highlighted the office’s support for legislative reforms to narrow the types of offences eligible for the death penalty, in accordance with international human rights laws, as a first step towards an end to application of the death penalty.

According to figures released by the UN office for human rights, 160 UN member states have abolished the penalty or suspended its application.  

Jordan, which has not officially abolished the death penalty, has not carried out an execution since 2006 but has issued death sentences.