At an international death penalty conference in Washington, DC, hosted by the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty, the European Union strongly renewed its call for a global end to the use of capital punishment. In his opening remarks for the conference, David O’Sullivan, the European Union’s Ambassador to the United States, expressed optimism about recent declines in the use of the death penalty in the United States and said “the abolition of capital punishment … would put the U.S. on the right side of history.” On June 22-24, 2017, government representatives, non-governmental organizations, abolitionists, and death-penalty experts from around the world gathered on the campus of Catholic University in Washington, DC for a conference on the state of the death penalty throughout the world and a celebration of the World Coalition’s 15th anniversary. The 2017 conference looked in-depth at the relationship between poverty and capital punishment, with speakers from India, Nigeria, and the U.S. describing the pervasive impact of poverty on crime, death-penalty charging practices, and access to qualified defense counsel and the courts. Other sessions included a panel of seven U.S. death-row exonerees, who discussed their cases and the inherent risk of sentencing innocent people to death. In his remarks, Ambassador O’Sullivan described as an “inherent flaw of the death penalty … that it is deeply rooted in social injustice. Everywhere the death penalty is applied globally, statistics show that it discriminates against the poor, the minorities and the marginalised citizens of a society.” O’Sullivan said, “[a]s a union founded on democracy, human rights and the rule of law, it is natural for us to oppose [the death penalty].” He described capital punishment as “a dehumanizing practice” that disserves victims’ families. “We are also convinced that it is an illusion to believe that the death penalty deters the most serious crimes,” he said. “What we need, in the United States and in those countries where the death penalty continues to be legal, is a vibrant civil society working in conjunction with political leaders, who together with public support will work to repeal the death penalty, thus ending this blight on our common humanity.”

(D. O’Sullivan, “Opening Remarks Ambassador David O’Sullivan | EU’s global advocacy to abolish capital punishment,” Delegation of the European Union to the United States, June 23, 2017; A. Placais and J. Corredor, “World Coalition Conference to celebrate 15th anniversary in Washington D.C.,” World Coalition Against the Death Penalty, June 9, 2017.) See International.

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