NEW YORK, NOVEMBER 14 – The international community offered unprecedented support to a UN call to halt executions when the Third Committee of the UN General Assembly considered a draft resolution on a moratorium on the use of the death penalty. A total of 123 UN member states – the highest number on record to date – voted in favour of the proposal, mirroring recent increases in the number of countries that have abolished the death penalty in law or practice globally.
36 delegations voted against, while 30 abstained. As in previous years, the draft resolution’s passage followed an intense debate and Singapore introduced an amendment on behalf of 34 countries that reaffirmed the countries’ sovereign right to develop their own legal system. The Committee approved this amendment by a recorded vote of 96 in favour to 73 against, with 14 abstentions.
At Italy’s instigation, the UN moratorium on the death penalty resolution was presented for the first time in 2007 by the EU in partnership with eight co-author member States to the General Assembly of the United Nations, calling for general suspension (not abolition) of capital punishment throughout the world. In 2016, the last time it was adopted, it received a total of 115 “yes” within the Third Committee. (@OnuItalia)
