UN Secretary General calls countries to abolish death penalty

United Nations: United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called upon nations to abolish the death penalty.

Ban welcomes a record vote by a General Assembly committee in favour of the call for a moratorium on the use of the death penalty, his spokesperson said Wednesday. India, US and China were among 39 nations voting against the resolution in the Assembly’s Third Committee, which deals with social and humanitarian issues, as well as human rights, on Monday.

The new resolution, inter alia, calls on all States to establish a moratorium on executions with a view to abolishing the death penalty.

Ban’s spokesperson said the Committee’s resolution reflects a trend against capital punishment which has grown stronger across regions, legal traditions and customs since a landmark General Assembly resolution on the topic in 2007.

“The Secretary General saluted this development at a high-level event on the death penalty in New York this July,” the spokesperson added.”He said then that the taking of life is too absolute, too irreversible, for one human being to inflict on another, even when backed by legal process.”