UN Secretary-General: ​“I Will Never Stop Calling for an End to the Death Penalty”

Calling the punishment “simply wrong,” United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon has vowed to “never stop calling for an end to the death penalty.” Speaking at the launch of a new book by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, “Moving Away from the Death Penalty: Arguments, Trends and Perspectives,” the Secretary-General highlighted the worldwide decline of capital punishment, noting that “more and more countries and States are abolishing the death penalty.” Data from the book confirms these trends: in 1975, about 97% of countries were carrying out executions, as compared to only 27% today. Ban Ki-Moon appeared alongside Kirk Bloodsworth, the first death-sentenced person in the U.S. to have been exonerated by DNA evidence. The Secretary-General said of Bloodsworth, “[Mr. Bloodsworth] represents the reason we are here today. He is totally innocent of any crime. But like too many other people, he suffered the unforgiveable injustice of a death sentence…I am conscious that he says he was not exonerated because the system worked but because of a series of miracles.” Bloodsworth explained his reasons for supporting abolition by saying, “It’s very simple: if it can happen to me it can happen to anyone; in America or anywhere. What I’m saying is that an innocent person can be executed and that should never happen. If it can happen to me it can happen to anybody anywhere in the world.”

Ban Ki-Moon also emphasized the “harsh reality” that the death penalty discriminates. “Study after study proves that if you are poor, minority or mentally disabled, you are at higher risk regardless of guilt or innocence,” he said. “When we safeguard the human rights of the most vulnerable, we promote more peaceful, just and stable conditions for all.”

(“‘I will never stop calling for an end to the death penalty,’ Ban vows at launch of new UN publication,” UN News Centre, November 5, 2015.) See Books and International.