22 October 2009 :

the Palestinian newspaper al Quds al Arabi reported the founding and subsequent announcement by the "Syrian Alliance against the Death Penalty." The new movement was born in the Syrian capital Damascus, the work of a group of organisations to defend civil rights.
In the founding announcement, the movement states that "the death penalty, other than being ineffective as a means of dissuading criminals, has been rejected in numerous civil societies, being substituted with life imprisonment."
The new movement asks the Syrian government to "adhere to the Second Optional Protocol of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, relative to the abolition of the death penalty," adopted by the UN General Assembly on December 15, 1989, which came into force on July 11, 1991.