Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Transatlantic Perspectives on Capital Punishment
- PART I WHAT IS A PENALTY OF DEATH: CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IN CONTEXT
- Part II ON THE MEANING OF DEATH AND PAIN IN EUROPE AND THE UNITED STATES: VIEWING, WITNESSING, UNDERSTANDING
- Part III ABOLITIONIST DISCOURSES, ABOLITIONIST STRATEGIES, ABOLITIONIST DILEMMAS: TRANSATLANTIC PERSPECTIVES
- 7 Civilized Rebels
- 8 The Death of Dignity
- 9 Sovereignty and the Unnecessary Penalty of Death
- 10 European Policy on the Death Penalty
- 11 The Long Shadow of the Death Penalty
- Index
- References
9 - Sovereignty and the Unnecessary Penalty of Death
European and United States Perspectives
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 February 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Transatlantic Perspectives on Capital Punishment
- PART I WHAT IS A PENALTY OF DEATH: CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IN CONTEXT
- Part II ON THE MEANING OF DEATH AND PAIN IN EUROPE AND THE UNITED STATES: VIEWING, WITNESSING, UNDERSTANDING
- Part III ABOLITIONIST DISCOURSES, ABOLITIONIST STRATEGIES, ABOLITIONIST DILEMMAS: TRANSATLANTIC PERSPECTIVES
- 7 Civilized Rebels
- 8 The Death of Dignity
- 9 Sovereignty and the Unnecessary Penalty of Death
- 10 European Policy on the Death Penalty
- 11 The Long Shadow of the Death Penalty
- Index
- References
Summary
INTRODUCTION
José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the Prime Minister of Spain, stated in the United Nations' Palace of Nations in Geneva on February 24, 2010, that the Spanish government will take a leading role in promoting the worldwide abolition of the death penalty. It would promote initiatives within the European Union and the United Nations, and also create an International Academic Network Against the Death Penalty. Prime Minister Zapatero's visionary position can be placed within the marked proliferation, most clearly demonstrated since the late 1980s, of sovereign governments accepting the arguments that the death penalty is an ineffective penal policy, and that it is also a violation of human rights. This statement in the United Nations can be seen as a further political approval, and a strategic continuation, of the first adopted United Nations General Assembly resolution calling for a worldwide moratorium on the death penalty in December 2007, and in 2008 the General Assembly affirmed “the decisions taken by an increasing number of States to apply a moratorium on executions and the global trend towards the abolition of the death penalty.” As of March 2010, 139 countries have abolished the death penalty, and since 2000, there have been 23 countries that have abolished this punishment in all circumstances. A minority of 58 countries have the death penalty on their statute books, but in 2008, only 25 countries were known to Amnesty International to have administered an execution, and it is notable that “[n]inety three percent of all known executions took place in five countries: China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the USA.”
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Is the Death Penalty Dying?European and American Perspectives, pp. 236 - 267Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011
References
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