BDMI-MUN rd 5 th April, 2015 STUDY GUIDE - UNHRC AGENDA : RIGHT TO LIFE VIS-À-VIS ABOLITION OF DEATH PENALTY

Transcription

1 BDMI-MUN 2015 STUDY GUIDE - UNHRC AGENDA : RIGHT TO LIFE VIS-À-VIS ABOLITION OF DEATH PENALTY 3 rd 5 th April, 2015 BDMI-MUN 2015 KOLKATA Page 1

2 LETTER FROM THE EXECUTIVE BOARD Dear Delegates, On behalf of the Organizing committee of the conference, it is our pleasure to oversee and conduct this diplomatic simulation of the Human Rights Council. This committee is going to brainstorm and seek to acknowledge the right one has over his life. The importance of one s right to life and the dilemma of capital punishment. This study guide only contains pointers as to what could provide for a meaningful discussion pertinent to the agenda. The onus lies on you to carry out significant academic study from credible references, on the basis of these pointers. Questions to be discussed in committee have been mentioned towards the end of the study guide. However, do not restrict yourself in trying to resolve those questions. The floor will be welcome to any point which will chart the flow of meaningful debate. Should you have any queries, do feel free to reach out to us at any point in time. We wish you all the luck in your research and preparation for the conference, and look forward to meeting you during committee session and hope that you come with great expectations and leave with greater experiences. MUN conferences have for too long been plagued by substandard research, mediocre argumentation and perverse resolutions, help us to create a change in the way this is perceived. Do research the updated information on various news agencies but be careful of quoting the credible sources only while presenting arguments/points. Happy Researching. Cheers! Executive Board UNHRC BDMI MUN, BDMI-MUN 2015 KOLKATA Page 2

3 What is this study guide? STUDY GUIDE FAQ This is a tool to enable you to better understand your agenda. What is this study guide not? This is not the be all, end all of your research as a delegate in the Committee at BDMI MUN. This is only the start of your research and must be accompanied by your own extensive research in the following spheres: 1. Basic council research: Look into the inner workings of the UNSC. Understand their mandate and how they make decisions. 2. Basic country research: Understand your own country. Know as much about your allotted country as a well educated adult of that country does. 3. Basic Agenda research: Read the study guide. Go through the references given, and look for more information on the ISIS, who they are, and what they do. 4. Frenemy research: Understand the international relations of your nation. Find out who has your back in council, and who doesn t. BDMI-MUN 2015 KOLKATA Page 3

4 Nature of Proof and Evidence Documents from the following sources will be considered as credible proof for any allegations made in committee or statements that require verification. Reuters: Appropriate Documents and articles from the Reuters News agency will be used to corroborate or refute controversial statements made in committee. Amnesty International: Reports will always be preferred in case of conflicts in statements. UN Document: Documents by all UN agencies will be considered as sufficient proof. Reports from all UN bodies including treaty based bodies will also be accepted. Government Reports: Government Reports of a given country used to corroborate an allegation on the same aforementioned country will be accepted as proof. BDMI-MUN 2015 KOLKATA Page 4

5 How does the Human Rights Council work? The Council was created by the United Nations General Assembly on 15 March 2006 by resolution 60/251. Its first session took place from 19 to 30 June One year later, the Council adopted its "Institution-building package" to guide its work and set up its procedures and mechanisms. All countries at the United Nations take part in the work of the Human Rights Council. But only 47 countries make decisions. Among them the Universal Periodic Review mechanism which serves to assess the human rights situations in all United Nations Member States, the Advisory Committee which serves as the Council s think tank providing it with expertise and advice on thematic human rights issues and the Complaint Procedure which allows individuals and organizations to bring human rights violations to the attention of the Council. The Human Rights Council also works with the UN Special Procedures established by the former Commission on Human Rights and now assumed by the Council. These are made up of special rapporteurs, special representatives and independent experts and working groups that monitor, examine, advice and publicly report on thematic issues or human rights situations in specific countries. Following are the different human rights monitoring mechanism in the United Nations supported by Office of High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR): 1. Charter Based Bodies Human Rights Council Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council Human Rights Council Complaint Procedure Note: The Human Rights Council is a separate entity from OHCHR. This distinction originates from the separate mandates they were given by the General Assembly. Nevertheless, OHCHR provides substantive support for the meetings of the Human Rights Council, and follow-up to the Council's deliberations. BDMI-MUN 2015 KOLKATA Page 5

6 2. Treaty- based bodies Human Rights Committee (CCPR) Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) Committee against Torture (CAT) Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture (SPT) Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) Committee on Migrant Workers (CMW) Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) Committee on Enforced Disappearances (CED) Since the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, all UN Member States have ratified at least one core international human rights treaty, and 80 percent have ratified four or more. There are currently ten human rights treaty bodies, which are committees of independent experts. Nine of these treaty bodies monitor implementation of the core international human rights treaties while the tenth treaty body, the Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture, established under the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture, monitors places of detention in States parties to the Optional Protocol. BDMI-MUN 2015 KOLKATA Page 6

7 Introduction: The taking of life is too absolute, too irreversible, for one human being to inflict it on another, even when backed by legal process. United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the lawful infliction of death as punishment for committing serious crimes, such as murder. 1 Capital punishment has existed since ancient history. 141 countries today have outlawed capital punishment, but many countries still practice it. 21 countries practiced the death penalty in 2011, and the top 5 countries were China, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the United States. 2 Capital punishment is delivered in various ways, including lethal injection, electrocution, lethal gas, firing squad, and hanging. 3 Some countries allow children to receive the death penalty. Some believe that the death penalty is a fair punishment for the most serious crimes, and it deters others from committing those crimes. Others believe that capital punishment is morally wrong, and sometimes innocent people are put to death. 4 The question facing the international community and the United Nations is whether capital punishment should be abolished worldwide. How death penalty is a concern under human rights: The "right of life" The concept of Human Rights is big, determined by many concepts and fields, and is still in permanent growth and international debate. Different cultures of diverse places of the world determined since early times (even before Christ) that there should be limits to power and to individual rights. Justinian, Iurisconsult and philosopher from the Golden Ages of the Roman Empire defined that the limit of individual rights ends where the other s start. The earliest societies of Latin America (as the Guaranies from Paraguay and the Valdivians of South Pacific coasts) say that there are no individual rights because all the society, as a group, has the same rights to coexist in that determined society if this individuals want to become part of the society (preserving life and honor, without a concept of private property). Earliest civilizations as the Persians (Zoroaster Philosophy) determined that the destiny manage life and death of people and cultures, but between, there are some rights, individual and collective, to be protected and preserved by a society. The Chinese Judges of the Ching Dynasty gave the authority to the Emperor, to determine the rights that Gods want to protect, (dividing them in the chapters: life, land, honor and family). 1 Capital Punishment. West's Encyclopedia of American Law The Death Penalty in Amnesty International. 3 Methods of Execution. International Justice Project BDMI-MUN 2015 KOLKATA Page 7

8 The Trend towards Worldwide Abolition In 1986, 46 countries had abolished the death penalty for ordinary crimes. 5 Sixteen years later, the number of countries in the same category had almost doubled to Moreover, another 22 countries had stopped using the death penalty in practice, bringing the total of non-death penalty countries to 111, far more than the 84 countries which retain an active death penalty. Roger Hood, in his book about world developments in the death penalty, noted that: "The annual average rate at which countries have abolished the death penalty has increased from 1.5 ( ) to 4 per year ( ), or nearly three times as many." 7 International law expert, William Schabas, noted that fifty years ago this topic did not even exist because there were virtually no abolitionist countries. 8 For a world in which the death penalty has been practiced almost everywhere for centuries, this is a dramatic turnaround. Although formal abolition of the death penalty dates as far back as 1867 for Venezuela and 1870 for the Netherlands, and even earlier for the state of Michigan (1846), most of the movement towards elimination of capital punishment has been fairly recent. 9 The death penalty worldwide The fight against the death penalty is a long-term struggle in which tangible progress is made every year in all the world s regions. A downward trend has been noted in the number of death sentences and executions worldwide. In the past 20 years, more than 50 states have outlawed the death penalty. In 1981, France became the 36th state to abandon this cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. In 2007, she ratified the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, aiming at the abolition of the death penalty. Adopted by the United Nations in 1989, the Protocol is the first instrument of global reach to assert that abolishing the death penalty helps promote human dignity and the progressive development of human rights. On 5 July 2012, the Republic of Benin abolished the death penalty by adhering to the Optional Protocol. More than 100 states worldwide have taken the decisive and irreversible step from the moratorium observed for the past several years to outlawing the death penalty. Many states have been observing de facto moratoriums, sometimes for several decades. What obstacles prevent states moving from moratoriums to abolition? How can the international community help states abandon the death penalty in their judicial systems and thus strengthen the protection of human rights? What role is there for the United Nations, the pro-abolition states and civil society? A downward trend has been noted in the number of death sentences and executions worldwide. In the past 20 years, more than 50 states have outlawed the death penalty. 5 See Amnesty International, United States of America: The Death Penalty 228 (Appendix 12) (1987) 6 See Amnesty International, "Facts and Figures on the Death Penalty," 7 R. Hood, the Death Penalty: A World-wide Perspective 8 (2d edit. 1996). 8 See Schabas, the Abolition of the Death Penalty in International Law 1 (1997). 9 Ibid BDMI-MUN 2015 KOLKATA Page 8

9 To date, 97 states have abolished the death penalty for all crimes, eight have abolished it for ordinary crimes and 36 are observing moratoriums on executions making a total of 141 states. However, the death penalty is still applied in 57 states and territories. Since 2011, 23 states have carried out executions. While the number of countries carrying out executions is in decline, the latest report by Amnesty International gave a figure of 676 executions in 2011, as compared with 527 in 2010, which shows that the number of executions is increasing in the hard core of retentionist countries: basically Saudi Arabia, Iran and Iraq. Moreover, the real figure is hard to ascertain in the absence of official statistics in certain states, including China. As for the number of sentences, it has fallen from 2,024 in 2010 to 1,923 in Every year, new countries abolish the death penalty: Mongolia ratified the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, aiming at the abolition of the death penalty, in January Latvia abolished the death penalty for all crimes in January Honduras and the Dominican Republic ratified the additional Protocol to the American Convention on Human Rights to Abolish the Death Penalty in November 2011 and January 2012 respectively. In the United States, Illinois and Connecticut became the 16th and 17th states to abolish capital punishment, in March 2011 and April 2012 respectively. A. NORTH AFRICA AND THE MIDDLE EAST Despite the hopes raised by the Arab Spring, none of the 22 states in the region have abolished the death penalty. In 2011, at least 558 executions were recorded in eight countries (Saudi Arabia, the Palestinian Authority, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Iraq, Iran, Syria and Yemen), including several hundred in Iran, 68 in Iraq and at least 82 in Saudi Arabia, a trend which has continued in No information is available on the use of the death penalty in Libya in 2011, but many reports cite extrajudicial executions by all the parties in the conflict. The other countries have observed de facto moratoriums for several years (Tunisia since 1991, Morocco and Algeria since 1993, Lebanon since 2004 and Jordan since 2006). The states counted are not all members of the United Nations among others, the Cook Islands, the Vatican and Niue hence the total figure of more than 193. Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh, Belarus, China, North Korea, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, the United States, Gambia, Iraq, Iran, Japan, Malaysia, the Palestinian Authority, Singapore, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Syria, Taiwan, Vietnam and Yemen. BDMI-MUN 2015 KOLKATA Page 9

10 B. ASIA Mongolia abolished the death penalty in March 2012, thus joining Nepal, East Timor, the Philippines and Cambodia as abolitionist states in the region. Several states have observed de facto moratoriums for several years (the Maldives since 1952, Sri Lanka since 1976, Burma since 1988, Laos since 1989, South Korea since 1997 and India since 2004). Pakistan has now had a moratorium in force since In 2011, eight states carried out executions Afghanistan, Bangladesh, China, North Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan and Vietnam but 18 states issued death sentences. In the absence of official data, it is estimated that there are several thousand executions a year in China. On 29 March 2012, Japan broke a de facto moratorium observed for a year and a half, by hanging three condemned people. The country carried out more executions in August C. THE AMERICAS AND CARIBBEAN A large majority of the American continent is abolitionist. In 2011 and to date, the United States has been the only country in the continent to carry out executions. However, positive results can be seen, with the abolition of the death penalty in Illinois and Connecticut and the introduction of a moratorium in Oregon. In the rest of the continent, Belize, Cuba, Jamaica, Guatemala, Guyana, Surinam, Trinidad and Tobago and most of the English-speaking Caribbean islands have failed to abolish the death penalty. However, the Commonwealth countries observe a de facto moratorium, following the judgement of the Privy Council in the Pratt and Morgan case, whereby the implementation of the death penalty more than five years after the sentence constitutes cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights opposes the death penalty and frequently speaks out against executions in the United States. D. AFRICA Seventeen out of 48 states have outlawed the death penalty and a positive trend has been noted in recent years. In 2009, Togo and Burundi joined the abolitionist states. Benin abolished the death penalty in June 2012 and the Democratic Republic of Congo decided in March 2012 on an irreversible moratorium and gradual abolition. Bucking this positive trend, Botswana and Gambia carried out executions in The African Commission on Human and People s Rights called for the abolition of the death penalty at its 49th session in BDMI-MUN 2015 KOLKATA Page 10

11 E. EASTERN EUROPE Belarus remains the only state on the European continent not to have abolished capital punishment. Four people have been executed there since 2011, two of them in March Russia introduced a moratorium on executions in BDMI-MUN 2015 KOLKATA Page 11

12 Relevant UN Documents, Treaties and Events Relevant UN resolutions and treaties can be found at United Nations Convention on the Rights of Child. This resolution is basically the resolution that ended capital punishment to minors. Refer to article 6 and 37 for the clause. Although the age of minority differs depending on the country and the state you are in, this resolution sets the standard of minority as eighteen. Currently, United States of America and Somalia are the two nations that have not ratified to this convention, mainly due to the prohibition of children execution. International Covenant on Civil and Human Rights This is another resolution that brought an end to the death penalty to minors. At the same time, it states the guideline of human rights and sets the standard of who should be legally executed or not. Article 6 explains the guidelines and has been the center of controversy for some time period regarding the most serious crimes that would lead to a capital punishment. In some cases, the death penalty is opposed by the public or even abolished due to the dominant religion within the country. Question of The death penalty: Commission on Human Rights Resolution 1999/61 April This is basically the resolution approved after combining the Convention on the Rights of a Child and the International Covenant on Civil and Human Rights. This resolution aims to reduce the number of executed prisoners and completely eliminates execution of juveniles under the age of 18. BDMI-MUN 2015 KOLKATA Page 12

13 Factors that led to the prohibition of the death penalty in many countries 70 percent of all countries in the world have currently banned capital punishment. The reasons behind this action are very similar for most of the countries. These are some of the factors that prohibited capital punishment and, of course, the death penalty to minors. Human Rights Issue The biggest obstacle in reviving the practice comes from human rights issue. The death penalty itself has been banned in most nations due to this issue. Although different countries have different point of views towards human rights, many nations strictly abide by article 6.1 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which states, Every human being has the inherent right to life. This right shall be protected by law. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life. However, some countries that legally practice the death penalty have questioned the need to consider the human rights of those who commit serious crime the concept of human rights should not apply to those who equally infringe human rights of others. Several events have led to questioning the validity of the human rights law. False Accusations We have seen many people wrongly accused of a crime which they didn t do. Heavy crimes are no exceptions. In fact, 82 inmates who were sentenced to death were proven to be innocent over the years in America only since In other words, one out of seven people waiting for their turn to be executed are wrongly accused. Experts say that if the death penalty revives, the law itself would go against the conventions of human rights. Cost and Effect Surprisingly, legally executing a prisoner requires a remarkable amount of money. In fact, there is a reason why those who are sentenced to death have to wait a long time before they are executed. Before execution takes place, counseling for defense, appealing, and maximum security will cost an average of approximately $2 million per person. To make things worse, despite its cost, the death penalty has not been the best way to reduce crime rates. Texas and Oklahoma are the places where the most execution takes place and have taken place in history. Yet, the crime rate has not changed for decades, proving that the death penalty has nothing to do with reducing the crime rate of that particular region. BDMI-MUN 2015 KOLKATA Page 13

14 COUNTRIES IN WHICH THE DEATH PENALTY HAS NOT BEEN ABOLISHED Executions in 2011 There has been an almost continuous declining trend in executions since the World Wars. As of 2012, 97 countries have abolished capital punishment altogether, 8 have done so for all offences except under special circumstances, and 36 have not used it for at least 10 years or have been under a moratorium. The other 57 have retained the death penalty in active use China: >= 4000 executions 2. Iran: >= 360 executions 3. Saudi Arabia: >= 82 executions 4. Iraq: >= 68 executions 5. United States of America: >= 43 executions Issues the Resolution must address: 1. The status of the implementation of the death penalty in various countries. 2. The violation of a person s human rights through the death penalty. 3. The constitutionality of the death penalty in states where it is being implemented. 4. The religious aspects of implementing the death penalty. 10 "Abolitionist and Retentionist Countries Amnesty International" BDMI-MUN 2015 KOLKATA Page 14

15 5. Whether the death penalty does indeed deter murder more than any alternative form of punishment would. 6. Erroneous convictions and execution of innocent people. 7. Inflicting the death penalty on individuals with diminished mental capacity. 8. Politicizing the death penalty. 9. For countries that practice capital punishment, do they have a right to decide whether or not to practice it? Or can the international community tell these governments what to do? 10. In countries where capital punishment takes place, should teenagers, children, the mentally handicapped, and other types of people be excluded from capital punishment? BDMI-MUN 2015 KOLKATA Page 15

16 Further Research: penalty_web.pdf BDMI-MUN 2015 KOLKATA Page 16