HOC PRO MORATORIUM CAMPAIGN OUTLOOK

August 3, 2012: In December 2012, the General Assembly will vote a new resolution in favor of a moratorium on the use of the death penalty, and Hands Off Cain has established two priorities, two objectives for its initiatives in support of the UN Resolution.
The first is increasing the number of co-sponsor countries and votes in favor of the Resolution. To reach this goal, Hands Off Cain, with the support of Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, has planned to organize, during next months, some missions to Africa, in particular, to four countries – Zimbabwe, Chad, Central African Republic, Swaziland – where there have been significant steps towards abolition of the death penalty.
The second priority is to strengthen the text of the new Resolution adding two basic requirements to be addressed to the countries that still practice capital punishment.
The first is to abolish “State Secrets” concerning the death penalty: several countries, mostly authoritarian, do not provide information on its application and the lack of information available concerning public opinion is a direct cause of an increasing number of executions. This is the case, for example, of China, Iran and Saudi Arabia, which, not by chance, are among the first executioner-countries in the world.
The second request is to limit death penalty to the “most serious crimes” and abolishing its mandatory prediction for certain typologies of crime.
Finally, Hands Off Cain proposes to include in the new Resolution the institution by the UN Secretary-General of the position of a Special Envoy. His job should be, not only to monitor the situation and to push for increased transparency within the systems of capital punishment, but also to continue to persuade those who still maintain the death penalty to accept the request of the United Nations for a moratorium on executions with a view to abolish the death penalty.