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.