Death Penalty

Interview with Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights Ivan Šimonović

A strong advocate for the abolition of the death penalty, Mr. Šimonović has said, “In the 21st century, the right to take someone’s life is not a part of the social contract between citizens and a State any more…” Ahead of the high-level event at Headquarters,

At the high-level event, the Office of the High Commissioner will launch a new publication called Moving away from the Death Penalty, Arguments, Trends and Perspectives. Let us start with arguments: why should the death penalty be abolished?

Ivan Šimonović: First, wrongful convictions. No legal system is immune to mistakes, and if you execute people, then this is too final to be acceptable.

Second, there was a matter of deterrence. I’m saying there “was” because now there is sufficient scientific evidence to conclude that there is no reliable evidence that there is any deterring effect of the death penalty.

Then, it is the issue of discrimination. Who is being executed? It’s usually marginalized groups. Literally all executed are poor, most are either minorities – national minorities, migrants – and in that sense, there is no justice when applying the death penalty.

Now sometimes it’s raised that you need it as a justice for victims, for their families. However, in practice, it doesn’t look that way. Many victims do not want revenge but prefer reconciliation. And the ones who want revenge do not really get it because if you want to avoid mistakes and miscarriages of justice those are long, long, long proceedings and in the end, very few people get executed in most systems. For example, here in the United States, out of intentional homicides, less than one per cent [of perpetrators] end up being executed. So if you want revenge, 99 per cent of victims and victims’ families end up frustrated.

And finally, there is a human rights argument that the development of human rights reduced sovereign rights of the States in...