Gail Alexan­der

It may in­deed be that Eu­ro­pean coun­tries lead the glob­al abo­li­tion­ist move­ment be­cause that part of the world has seen too many wars and too much death and killing in too many life­times.But fur­ther, deep­er rea­sons were ad­vanced for the cause dur­ing the June 15 clos­ing cer­e­mo­ny of the An­ti Death Penal­ty Con­gress in Madrid, af­ter abo­li­tion­ists from around the world met for four days to gauge their ef­forts in the last three years.

Held un­der the aus­pices of the French, Span­ish, Swiss and Nor­we­gian gov­ern­ments, the con­fer­ence held by the World Coali­tion Against the Death Penal­ty cal­cu­lat­ed the grow­ing plus­es of the move­ment and mi­nus­es that still need to be dealt with glob­al­ly.Among them, the Caribbean, where 13 ter­ri­to­ries in­clud­ing T&T still re­tain the death penal­ty and which will be the fo­cus of the move­ment's Oc­to­ber 10 World Day Against the Death Penal­ty ob­ser­vances and a height­en­ing of the abo­li­tion thrust in this re­gion.

Af­ter 21 de­bate ses­sions over June 12 to 15, with in­put from 1,500 par­tic­i­pants from 90 coun­tries, the move­ment has re­port­ed ex­pan­sion of the abo­li­tion thrust to 70 states, with hard­lin­ers like Iraq show­ing promise of soft­en­ing its stance (slight­ly).Robert Bad­in­ter, for­mer French jus­tice min­is­ter and au­thor of France's abo­li­tion law, re­gard­ed as the move­ment's god­fa­ther, chal­lenged the Madrid Con­gress to com­plete the job to­wards uni­ver­sal abo­li­tion, though he didn't ex­pect to see it in his life­time.

The move­ment's chal­lenges lie with the re­ten­tion­ist states of Asia, Africa, the Mid­dle East and the Caribbean. De­spite Mid­dle East re­sis­tance based on cul­ture, re­li­gion, ter­ror­ism and weak po­lit­i­cal sys­tems, the con­fer­ence con­clud­ed with for­ma­tion of the Mid­dle East Gen­er­al As­sem­bly to fo­cus on that area.

Some of In­dia's le­gal prac­ti­tion­ers press­ing for abo­li­tion have ap­pealed for the next con­gress to be held in In­dia. This bid may be pipped by Africa which was called up­on by the Eu­ro­pean Com­mis­sion for Hu­man Rights to play a lead­er­ship role in the fu­ture abo­li­tion thrust. Cer­tain African states like Rwan­da have be­come abo­li­tion­ist to as­sist in clean­ing for­mer his­to­ries of blood and gore.

Next con­gress in are­ten­tion­ist state

The clos­ing ses­sion's an­nounce­ment that the next con­gress will be held in a re­ten­tion­ist coun­try, con­firms ad­vances the move­ment has made since its glob­al meet­ings be­gan in 2001. The WCADP ap­pears more solid­ly seat­ed now to take mem­bers on­to re­ten­tion­ist soil.Part of the in­creased con­fi­dence comes from the fact that in the US–a Caribbean neigh­bour–a re­ten­tion­ist coun­try, the death penal­ty is on the de­cline ac­cord­ing to Richard Di­eter, ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of the US In­for­ma­tion Cen­tre for Cap­i­tal Pun­ish­ment.

Di­eter, among con­gress pan­el­lists, said the death penal­ty peaked in 1999 in the US with 98, and since 1999 there has been a 56 per cent drop in ex­e­cu­tions as well as among the num­ber of states halt­ing this. There's been a 75 per cent re­duc­tion in ex­e­cu­tions, Con­stance de la Ve­ga Law Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor added.

Out of 50 states, on­ly nine did ex­e­cu­tions in the last year, and some US states are in "mora­to­ri­um phase," he added. Di­eter said the death penal­ty is con­cen­trat­ed main­ly in south­ern USA, and there has been no sen­tences or ex­e­cu­tions since 2012. US Fed­er­al gov­ern­ment sys­tems, how­ev­er, re­tain the death penal­ty for all states.Rea­sons for the de­cline have been US Supreme Court de­ci­sions lim­it­ing the sen­tence for ju­ve­nile of­fend­ers and re­stric­tion of the death penal­ty to mur­der, he said.

Col­orado Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor, Michael Radelet, an­oth­er pan­el­list, said 49 per cent of Amer­i­cans sup­port the death penal­ty. The rest, sup­port life with­out pa­role. He said, "We still have a long way to go in the US, but the pic­ture is op­ti­mistic."

Radelet said the US may have to look to the next 2016 US pres­i­den­tial elec­tion–since the pres­i­dent ap­points supreme court judges and that could dri­ve the US death penal­ty de­bate. "...Or pres­i­dent Hillary Clin­ton or Michelle Oba­ma," Radelet quipped.

The Caribbean, which is the fo­cus of the abo­li­tion's move­ment's Oc­to­ber 10 con­fer­ence in T&T, is lo­cat­ed be­tween the abo­li­tion­ist coun­tries of South Amer­i­ca and the re­ten­tion­ist USA.

T&T's Leela Ramdeen was asked by con­gress par­tic­i­pants in Madrid if T&T and re­gion­al states were in­flu­enced by the US in any way. She said no.Re­gion­al­ly ten coun­tries are abo­li­tion­ist in law–Grena­da and Suri­name are con­sid­ered abo­li­tion­ist in prac­tice and 13 re­ten­tion­ist states in­clude T&T.The abo­li­tion­ist move­ment re­gards the Caribbean as a para­dox since there are few ex­e­cu­tions among the core of coun­tries strong­ly op­posed to abo­li­tion.

While the WCADP has not­ed po­si­tions by T&T, Ja­maica and Cu­ba on the is­sue, it has al­so not­ed the is­sue of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment has "dra­mat­i­cal­ly de­clined," high­light­ing the ap­par­ent dis­par­i­ty be­tween pol­i­cy and prac­tice.The last ex­e­cu­tion in the Caribbean was in 2008 in St Kitts–the on­ly one since 2003. On­ly three states is­sued death sen­tences in 2012–Bar­ba­dos, Guyana and T&T.While Cu­ba and Do­mini­ca have no death row pris­on­ers, six states have on­ly one per­son and T&T has 33.

The move­ment al­so notes Caribbean states' re­sis­tance to Unit­ed Na­tions res­o­lu­tions seek­ing a death penal­ty mora­to­ri­um. Nine states in­clud­ing T&T vot­ed against this.De­spite use of the death penal­ty as a crime de­ter­rent, the move­ment has not­ed some gov­ern­ments are in­creas­ing­ly re­al­is­ing they must fo­cus on pre­ven­tion rather than pun­ish­ment.

Cit­ing an­ti-crime mea­sures rang­ing from pover­ty re­duc­tion to ed­u­ca­tion and youth pro­grammes, abo­li­tion­ists said mea­sures in var­i­ous Caribbean states are "start­ing to have some im­pact."

Fol­low­ing the an­nounce­ment of the Oc­to­ber 10 con­fer­ence in T&T, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan said on Tues­day, T&T was well ap­point­ed for all meet­ings. He said, "T&T is the meet­ing place of the Caribbean, and we're hap­py to wel­come all in­ter­na­tion­al del­e­ga­tions. We're al­ways in­ter­est­ed in the ad­vance­ment of sen­si­ble dis­cus­sion on the de­vel­op­ment of hu­man rights.

"It is to the cred­it of the World Coali­tion Against the Death Penal­ty that they and their re­gion­al coun­ter­parts seek to hold their con­fer­ence in a coun­try that re­tains the death penal­ty as part of its laws. It speaks to the ma­tu­ri­ty of the agen­da and dis­cus­sions."We know the is­sue is a very emo­tion­al top­ic and a high po­lit­i­cal is­sue in the re­gion where there's an un­ac­cept­able lev­el of crime, and it will no doubt en­gen­der a spir­it­ed dis­cus­sion and give us all an op­por­tu­ni­ty to present the flip side of the coin."

Pri­or to the con­gress, Ram­lo­gan said ul­ti­mate­ly it's an is­sue the peo­ple will de­cide up­on. At the con­gress, US's Radelet al­so said it was a mat­ter some US pop­u­la­tions would de­cide on.

But as far as the abo­li­tion move­ment seems con­cerned, the fi­nal word–and it re­mains to be seen if it will be heed­ed uni­ver­sal­ly–may be­long to UN com­mis­sion­er for Hu­man Rights Na­vanethem Pil­lay, who called on con­gress par­tic­i­pants to re­mem­ber "....every time we kill in the name of the peo­ple, a piece of our own hu­man dig­ni­ty is shat­tered..."

The An­ti Death Penal­ty cre­do

�2 Stud­ies show the death penal­ty isn't a crime de­ter­rent

�2 Re­venge killing for mur­der isn't jus­tice

�2 Halt hang­ing–not lives

�2 Deal with crime, not in more death

�2 No state should have the pow­er to take a cit­i­zen's life

�2 It breach­es the 1948 uni­ver­sal de­c­la­ra­tion of Hu­man Rights

�2 Death penal­ties cre­ate more pain

�2 It is un­hu­man, cru­el, de­grad­ing

�2 Some vic­tims' fam­i­lies see no sense in seek­ing death for their rel­a­tives killers

�2 It is in­ef­fi­cient and de­nies any pos­si­bil­i­ty of re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion

�2 A life sen­tence with­out pa­role is sim­i­lar to a death sen­tence

�2 Al­ter­na­tives can in­clude life sen­tences sub­ject to re­view.