A world without the death penalty

There is no place for the death penalty in the modern world. State execution is a barbaric act that demeans the State that carries it out. The death penalty is cruel and inhumane, and is inevitably associated with miscarriages of justice, the inadvertent execution of innocents, and the disproportionate execution of the poor and ethnic and religious minorities. Not only does an eye for an eye leave the world blind, but the deliberate destruction of human life as a response to crime is an affront to the ‘right to life’, enshrined under international human rights law.

The world has come a long way towards ceasing the practice of capital punishment. Amnesty International tells us that in 1977 only 16 countries had abolished the death penalty. Since that year, Amnesty and many others have campaigned vigorously for an end to capital punishment, and by 2015 140 countries had abolished it law or in practice.

However, there is no room for complacency. There are still 56 countries that actively retain the death penalty, including some that execute hundreds of people each year. Disturbingly, the year 2015 saw the highest number of executions recorded worldwide since 1989. It also saw the appalling executions of Australians Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran in Indonesia for drug trafficking, despite impassioned appeals from many Australians and sympathetic Indonesians.

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