CARIBBEAN URGED TO ABOLISH DEATH PENALTY

October 9, 2013: The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) urged Caribbean countries that still have the death penalty to abolish it or at least to impose a moratorium on its application.
In a message marking International Day against the Death Penalty on Thursday (October 10), the IACHR said regional instruments for protection of human rights do not prohibit per se the imposition of the death penalty, but they establish specific restrictions and prohibitions regarding its application.
“The American Convention on Human Rights establishes provisions required to limit its application, with the aim of achieving its gradual disappearance,” the IACHR said, pointing to a clear global trend toward abolishing the death penalty, based on recent developments in this matter at the United Nations.
The IACHR said it was urging countries to ratify the Protocol to the American Convention on Human Rights to Abolish the Death Penalty; to refrain from adopting any measure that would expand the application of the death penalty or reintroduce it and to take any measures necessary to ensure compliance with the strictest standards of due process in cases involving the application of the death penalty.
The IACHR said while capital punishment remains a pressing challenge, the region has seen significant changes, including reforms to restrict the types of crimes and circumstances in which the death penalty can be applied, as well as explicit or de facto moratoriums.
“Of particular importance have been advances in Caribbean countries related to the mandatory imposition of the death penalty, that is, when it is imposed after a criminal conviction without the opportunity for presenting or considering mitigating circumstances.
“The development of inter-American standards establishing that the death penalty contravenes the American Convention and the American Declaration, as well as interaction between the inter-American human rights bodies and the judicial bodies of the Commonwealth Caribbean, among other factors, have led to progress in the elimination of the mandatory death penalty in the majority of the countries of the Caribbean.” (Sources: caribbean360.com, 09/10/2013)