U.S. Votes No, as Record Number of Nations Adopt UN Resolution for Global Moratorium on the Death Penalty

With the sup­port of a record 125 nations, the United Nations General Assembly has over­whelm­ing­ly adopt­ed a res­o­lu­tion call­ing for a glob­al mora­to­ri­um on the use of the death penal­ty with a view towards its ulti­mate abo­li­tion. The United States vot­ed no, plac­ing it in the com­pa­ny of Iran, Iraq, Saudia Arabia, China, North Korea, and Vietnam.

The final vote, tak­en on the 15^th anniver­sary of the General Assembly’s first adop­tion of a mora­to­ri­um res­o­lu­tion on December 15, 2007, was 125 nations in favor, 37 opposed, and 22 absten­tions. Support for a glob­al exe­cu­tion mora­to­ri­um topped the pre­vi­ous record of 120 attained in 2018 and matched in 2020. In November 2020, 120 nations sup­port­ed the res­o­lu­tion, 39 opposed, and 24 abstained. 

In a joint state­ment, Penny Wong and Arnoldo André Tinoco, the for­eign min­is­ters of Australia and Costa Rica who led the mora­to­ri­um dis­cus­sion, char­ac­ter­ized the super­ma­jor­i­ty vote ​“of almost two thirds” of the world’s nations as ​“his­toric.”

“The record lev­el of sup­port for the res­o­lu­tion shows that the major­i­ty of Member States agree this bru­tal and inhu­mane pun­ish­ment must end,” they wrote. ​“Already, four out of every five coun­tries have abol­ished the death penal­ty or no longer apply it.”

The U.S. vote dis­ap­point­ed death penal­ty oppo­nents who con­sid­ered the res­o­lu­tion a major oppor­tu­ni­ty for the Biden admin­is­tra­tion to take action to advance the President’s cam­paign pledge to work to end the death penalty. 

Former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley, who signed into law the bill abol­ish­ing the death penal­ty in Maryland in 2013 and now serves as a com­mis­sion­er on the International Commission Against the Death Penalty, urged Biden to sup­port the mora­to­ri­um res­o­lu­tion. ​“All of America’s European allies, every coun­try in the Western Hemisphere and a fast-increas­ing num­ber of African nations will be among th[e] super-major­i­ty” sup­port­ing the res­o­lu­tion, he wrote in a December 12 com­men­tary in America Magazine. ​“Why then would President Biden — who has done so much to repair America’s alliances abroad — have us side with Iran, Saudi Arabia and North Korea in vot­ing for con­tin­ued use of the death penal­ty in the world? … It is time for America to stop giv­ing polit­i­cal cov­er on the world stage to Iranian and Saudi executions.”

The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, a coali­tion of more than 230 nation­al orga­ni­za­tions, wrote to President Biden in advance of the vote advo­cat­ing sup­port for the mora­to­ri­um or, in the alter­na­tive, that the U.S. abstain. Its let­ter, co-signed by 48 oth­er orga­ni­za­tions, said that “[a]ny crim­i­nal-legal sys­tem tru­ly ded­i­cat­ed to the pur­suit of jus­tice should rec­og­nize the human­i­ty of all who encounter it and not sanc­tion the use of a dis­crim­i­na­to­ry prac­tice that denies indi­vid­u­als their rights, fails to respect their dig­ni­ty, and stands in stark con­trast to the fun­da­men­tal val­ues of our demo­c­ra­t­ic sys­tem of gov­er­nance.” The con­tin­ued use of the death penal­ty in the United States, the Leadership Conference wrote, ​“flouts human rights laws and norms.”

Moratorium res­o­lu­tions have been intro­duced in each two-year ses­sion of the U.N. General Assembly since 2007. In its first year, it passed 104 – 54 and has gained addi­tion­al sup­port each time since. The U.S. has con­sis­tent­ly opposed the resolution.

Prior to the final vote this ses­sion, the U.S. Mission to the UN wrote a let­ter to the com­mit­tee chair set­ting forth the basis for its oppo­si­tion to the res­o­lu­tion. The U.S. diplo­mats wrote: ​“the ulti­mate deci­sion regard­ing these issues must be addressed through the demo­c­ra­t­ic process­es of indi­vid­ual Member States and be con­sis­tent with their oblig­a­tions under inter­na­tion­al law. International human rights law estab­lish­es clear­ly that Member States may, with­in cer­tain estab­lished para­me­ters, use [the death penal­ty] …. Accordingly, the U.S. does not under­stand the law­ful use of this form of pun­ish­ment as con­tra­ven­ing respect for human rights, both as it relates to the con­vict­ed and sen­tenced indi­vid­ual as well as the rights of oth­ers. Those states wish­ing to abol­ish the death penal­ty with­in their juris­dic­tion may choose to rat­i­fy the Second Optional Protocol to the ICCPR.” The let­ter urged U.N. Member States to instead ​“focus their atten­tion toward address­ing and pre­vent­ing human rights vio­la­tions that may result from the improp­er impo­si­tion and appli­ca­tion of capital punishment.”

In a col­umn in Verdict Justicia, Amherst College pro­fes­sor Austin Sarat crit­i­cized the U.S. response as ​“legal­is­tic” and said it ​“obscures the issue in prin­ci­ple. The United States should acknowl­edge that the death penal­ty can­not be squared with a com­mit­ment to human rights. It should sup­port the mora­to­ri­um res­o­lu­tion whole­heart­ed­ly,” he wrote.

“It is time for [President Biden] to put this coun­try on record as com­mit­ted to end­ing the death penal­ty,” Sarat wrote. ​“Doing so would send a strong sig­nal of where he wants to lead the coun­try on this issue and also would lend sup­port to groups work­ing to end the death penal­ty both in this coun­try and in nations like Saudi Arabia, China, North Korea, and Iran which still use it. … If we do not do so, we are giv­ing aid and com­fort to the very regime whose acts we denounce when that regime car­ries out its most brutal deeds.”