06 March 2008 :

Sergio D’Elia, Member of the Parliamentary Foreign Affairs Commission and Matteo Mecacci, Vice President of the Senate and the Non Violent Radical Party’s UN Representative, wrote to the Foreign Affairs Minister, Massimo D’Alema, asking the Italian Government to continue its leadership on the international level on the Moratorium on capital punishment.
D’Elia and Mecacci asked D’Alema to propose a Special UN Envoy on the Death Penalty at the UN. The Special Envoy would have the task of assisting UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon and UN Human Rights High Commissioner Louise Arbour in implementing the resolution approved on December 18 by the UN General Assembly, thanks to the support of 104 countries.
The occasion for the initiative is the 7th Session of the UN Council on Human Rights which opens today in Geneva and will be attended by numerous foreign affairs ministers. The promotion of human rights is confronted with substantial difficulty due to the opposition of a group of countries that, notwithstanding the overtaking of the old Human Rights Commission, continue to oppose the defence of human rights by the United Nations.