17 December 2024 :

The United Nations General Assembly has just passed its 10th Resolution for a universal moratorium on executions.
130 countries voted in favor, 22 abstained, and only 32 opposed. This is enormous progress when compared to the votes of the first resolution passed in 2007 which had 104 votes in favor, 54 against, 29 abstentions but also when compared to the previous vote in 2022 when the outcome was 125 votes in favor, 37 against, 22 abstentions (with 9 absent).
Sergio D'Elia Secretary of Hands off Cain commented on the news as follows, “Today's vote marks another step toward the worldwide abolition of the death penalty and certifies that capital punishment is now a practice out of history, an old iron of humanity that we need to get rid of. It also marks the affirmation of the principle that the abolition of the death penalty pertains to human rights. This is an awareness that, not only abolitionists like us but also the international community, legal culture and the civil conscience of humanity have matured. We must now,” Sergio D'Elia continued, ”look beyond the death penalty and see the new frontier of human rights in the field of punishment. This means that we must strive for the end, not only of the death penalty, of the penalty to death but also the end of the penalty of imprisonment because the great tragedy of human civilization today is not the number of those executed on death rows but that of the number of deaths from prison sentences.”