The Asia-Pacific Journal, Japan Focus, recently featured an article entitled, “Death Penalty Lessons from Asia,” written by David T. Johnson and Franklin E. Zimring. The article is based in part on the authors' book, The Next Frontier: National Development, Political Change, and the Death Penalty in Asia. Johnson is Professor of Sociology at the University of Hawaii. Zimring is the William G. Simon Professor of Law and Wolfen Scholar at the University of California at Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law. The article takes an in-depth look at the practice of the death penalty in Asian jurisdictions over the last few decades. Drawing parallels with the death penalty movement in Europe, Johnson and Zimring present economic development, political change and public opinion as influential to the practice of capital punishment in Asian countries. Their book is based on 5 major case studies of capital punishment in Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, and China, and 7 shorter case studies of capital punishment in North Korea, Hong Kong and Macao, Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore, and India.
Over 1,000 human rights activists from over 100 countries gathered in Geneva, Switzerland, for the 4th World Congress Against the Death Penalty. Many participants hope to achieve a moratorium on the imposition and execution of the death penalty around the world. At present, 56 states and territories still have the death penalty, including China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, North Korea and the United States. In 2007, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution calling for a moratorium on the death penalty. In recent years, the number of countries that have repealed capital punishment has been accelerating. The World Congress issued a resolution on February 26, calling for a series of steps toward ending the death penalty: "We call, from the host city of international organizations and a symbol of peace . . .[for] the universal abolition of capital punishment."
Amicus, an organization based in the United Kingdom that assists in the legal representation of those awaiting capital trials in the United States, will be hosting a mock trial at the Emmanuel Centre (pictured) in Westminster, London on Tuesday, March 2, beginning at 6:30 PM. The question is whether the death penalty in the U.S. perverts the course of justice. The trial will be presided over by Lord Woolf, Geoffrey Robertson, QC, and Sir Louis Blom-Cooper, QC, and will feature prominent death penalty experts including Prof. Paul Cassell (former federal prosecutor and former law clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia), Prof. Robert Blecker (NY Law School) and Kent Scheidegger (Criminal Justice Legal Fdn.) defending the death penalty, and Prof. Julian Killingley (Birmingham City Univ.), Rev. Cathy Harrington (Murder Victims' Families for Reconciliation), and Nick Trenticosta (Center for Equal Justice) prosecuting the death penalty. The program hopes to raise awareness of issues surrounding the application of the death penalty in the United States. Click 
On December 15 the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights marked the 20th anniversary of an international death penalty treaty by calling for the universal abolition of capital punishment. Navi Pillay, the top UN human rights official, urged all states to adopt the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The protocol, which bars the death penalty, was introduced in 1989. “Abolishing the death penalty is a difficult process for many societies," she said. "[A]nd ratification of the Optional Protocol can often only come about after a period of national debate. Until they reach that point, I urge those States still employing the death penalty to place a formal moratorium on its use, with the aim of ultimately ratifying the Optional Protocol and abolishing the punishment altogether everywhere.” In her statement, she enumerated a number of issues with the death penalty, including "the fundamental nature of the right to life; the unacceptable risk of executing innocent people by mistake; the absence of proof that the death penalty serves as a deterrent; and what is, to my mind, the inappropriately vengeful character of the sentence." To date, 140 countries no longer carry out the death penalty, and 72 countries have ratified the Optional Protocol on ending the death penalty. Read the full statement below.
The OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe), the world's largest regional security organization comprised of 56 States including the U.S., recently published a 2009 Background Paper on The Death Penalty in the OSCE Area. It was prepared by the OSCE's Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), and updates the 2008 background paper of the same title. The 2009 paper highlights the changes in status of the death penalty in participating OSCE states. Of the 56 countries, only the U.S. and Belarus retain an active death penalty. The Russian Federation and Tajikistan retain the death penalty but are not carrying out executions. The full text of the paper can be found in English and Russian on ODIHR's 
The Death Penalty Project of London recently published 
The President of Kenya, Mwai Kibaki, announced on August 3 that he is commuting the death sentences of everyone on the country's death row to life imprisonment. The President cited the wait to face execution of the more than 4,000 death row inmates as "undue mental anguish and suffering." No one has been executed in Kenya for 22 years. The President said he was following the advice of a constitutional committee. Mr. Kibaki has directed government officials to study whether the death penalty has any impact on fighting crime and he appealed to Kenyans to engage in a national debate on the issue, suggesting the government may be preparing the ground for a repeal of the death penalty.