11.

The UN Resolution: Getting to “No”

Just as it is strange that the modern efforts to do away with the death penalty are associated with a child ruler—Pietro Leopoldo of Tuscany—it’s strange too that efforts to do away with the death penalty in our own time will forever be linked to a cruel dictator: Saddam Hussein.

Saddam, of course, was sentenced to death by the provisional government in Iraq after his capture in the second Iraq War. At the time, the death sentence was a foregone conclusion, even a banality, by the standards of a period marked by the US military’s “shock and awe” strategy. And yet the actual execution of Saddam, on December 30, 2006, provoked indignation around the world. The photograph of the ousted dictator hanging by a noose spread across the web on computers and mobile phones; a crude video of the execution could be found online, too, made on a cell phone by one the executioners, whose laughter can be heard in the background. Never before had so many people seen what an execution looks like—and how barbaric it can be.

The images, together with the execution itself, sparked revulsion in several forms. Here execution could be seen as a brutal act, as cruelty carried out in the third millennium, as in Mississippi a century earlier, or in Nuremburg after World War II. It was seen as a crude and ultimately ineffective revenge inflicted by the victors. Even those who considered Saddam an evil man and a war criminal might hesitate and be sickened by what they saw. And in the Arab world, especially, so brutal an execution—carried out during a sacred time in the Islamic calendar—was seen as an act of revenge and aggression on the part of the Western-sponsored interim government, not as an act of international justice.

For the movement against the death penalty, Saddam’s execution was an unwanted opportunity, as the atrocities and spectacular executions in Iraq and Syria today may prove to be also. A moratorium on executions in wartime Iraq had been called for, so as to foster reconciliation, rather than retaliation, among the Iraqi people. Nevertheless, it was an opportunity—and a profound turning point. With a meaningful part of public opinion now running against the death penalty, those of us working for a moratorium rallied our efforts, and this time those working for full abolition, who generally opposed moratoria as halfway measures, did not stand in the way. All uncertainties and divisions within the movement subsided, everyone came together, and a predominantly European movement became a worldwide movement with the clear goal of a UN resolution against the death penalty backed by a broad, global coalition of member states. Writing this, I am reminded of a process that lasted months, culminating in a massive change.

Since the 1990s there had been a deep division between NGOs and states that favored the abolition of the death penalty and those that favored a moratorium. Africa was largely retentionist. So was the United States, whose lawmakers considered the country in a class by itself, even though a good number of individual US states were set against capital punishment. Countries in Asia applied the death penalty with vigor, while Europe became the first continent whose countries (except for Belarus) banned the death penalty without exception.

In 1998, the European Union prepared its second resolution calling for a moratorium on the death penalty and took it to the UN General Assembly, even though there remained internal divisions among European member states. After the EU’s presentation, Singapore led a rebuttal. Egypt and others, on behalf of Asian, Arab, Muslim, and Caribbean countries, pushed through “killer amendments” that contradicted the spirit of the draft Resolution, and threatened even more. They rejected the EU resolution on the grounds that it would interfere in their internal judicial affairs, and tried to label it as the expression of a neocolonialist notion of human rights. Italy proposed a preamble quoting both Articles Two and Three of the UN Charter so that a compromise could be found, but the EU stuck firm to its original text and no mediation proved possible. So the resolution was withdrawn without coming up for a vote.

From that moment on, the Community of Sant’Egidio worked to mend the split between the abolitionist and pro-moratorium factions. And we sought to correct the impression that the call for a change of policy on the death penalty was an act of European arrogance, or an attempt to impose a neocolonialist vision of human rights on less powerful countries.

The Appeal for a Universal Moratorium, which had garnered several million signatures and support from leaders of all political leanings, had created a sort of worldwide moral front against capital punishment.

In 2001, the First World Congress Against the Death Penalty took place in Strasbourg. This was an initiative of the French ECPM, supported by the French government. It led to a meeting of anti-death penalty activists from different parts of the world. Even if the conference was less global than European and francophone, it was an important step. It led to a meeting, in May 2002, of the leaders of some of the main NGOs and movements opposing the death penalty. We met at Sant’Egidio’s headquarters in Rome.

As in Julius Caesar’s time, Rome was a sort of cradle of the world. In a seventeenth-century building in Trastevere that housed a quiet garden, The World Coalition Against the Death Penalty was born from thirteen different movements, including ECPM, Sant’Egidio, Amnesty International, FIDH, PRI, NACDP, HoC, and DP Focus, among others.

There were few pictures taken in the tiny garden of Sant’Egidio’s headquarters. There was no official photographer. Nevertheless, that day turned out to be one of history’s small turning points. The World Coalition devised a strategy to coordinate grassroots efforts and lend support to smaller organizations. It instituted an annual World Day Against the Death Penalty on November 30. With Cities for Life - Cities Against the Death Penalty, we sought to demonstrate the vigor of opinion against the death penalty in officially retentionist states through events in prominent cities, and so to create internal tension in societies that continue to implement the death penalty, so that a call for change would come from within civil society. The peaceful war machine of November 30 had been already tested, so we established the first World Day on that year.

Now some of us had a clear agenda: to obtain a successful UN resolution. And all of us had a common goal, the abolition of capital punishment. Despite the differences between our two paths, we could now count on more effective tools and empower each other.

How was it possible to create a new process that would lead to the final approval of a UN Resolution in the UN General Assembly’s Third Committee, dedicated to social, humanitarian, and cultural development, where a Resolution had been withdrawn before the vote in 1998? The process involved politics, some strategizing, some compromise, some good timing, and some good luck. But it was rooted in our confidence in the cause, our sense that the death penalty is wrong and that more and more the people of the world are recognizing this and speaking up about it. The gray areas of the death penalty were slowly turning to white.

—

As far as the UN was concerned—and as I had anticipated—Amnesty International, the pioneer group campaigning against the death penalty, had favored proceeding slowly and cautiously, waiting until there was a clear majority of one hundred countries ratifying the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, still the only binding international treaty on the issue, before taking it to the General Assembly. At a rate of maybe five new ratifications per year, this would have taken ten years or more; the actual rate was—and remains—far slower.

The World Coalition had favored the same approach until 2007. Meanwhile, Hands Off Cain, an offshoot of the Radical Party in Italy and the force behind the first (withdrawn) UN resolution, used its political clout to urge Italian government leaders to take the issue back to the UN “at any cost.” The Prodi government and its foreign minister, Massimo D’Alema, caved to the pressure and started engaging the institution, but not everyone agreed with the notion of hastily presenting a solely Italian resolution in the sixty-first session of the General Assembly, which was drawing to a close around Easter. Somehow, also in direct, confidential contacts with the Community of Sant’Egidio, Italy’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs showed interest in focusing efforts on the next session of the General Assembly, the sixty-second, which was to be opened in September of that year.

The Community of Sant’Egidio was in favor of returning to the UN, but only with a well-prepared international and institutional campaign. So we’d need to organize one.

Hands Off Cain pushed its position during the Third World Congress against the Death Penalty in Paris in February 2007. The leader of the Radical Party, Marco Pannella, attended, even though Hands Off Cain, after co-founding the Coalition, went years without playing an active role in it. The signal given by the presence of the Italian radical leader was clear. Amnesty International, fearing a second (third) defeat at the UN, remained skeptical. The Congress’s final document, which defined the Moratorium as part of a worldwide strategy for abolishing capital punishment, met with serious resistance. Eric Prokosh, long of Amnesty International and now with the World Congress, prepared an abstract of the text, which he submitted to me in advance and which I helped to edit, calling for a commitment on the part of the international movement to the pursuit of a universal moratorium, but it was not approved. Rather, it was in danger of being crossed off, and the conflict threatened to break ties between international initiatives and the actions of anti-death penalty movements on the civil and institutional levels in the year in which it was likely that the battle would finally reach the UN in earnest. Its absence would have marked a repudiation of the initiative that was about to travel from Italy and the EU to the UN General Assembly in New York.

Speedy Rice of Death Penalty Focus and I tried to mediate the dispute through triangular conference calls between Rome, London, and New York, along with the London representatives of Amnesty International, Florence Bellivier of Penal Reform International (PRI), Eleonore Morel of the Federation International de Droites de l’Homme (FIDH), and Hands Off Cain. Finally, we settled on wording that enabled the World Coalition to support every effort to ask for a special effort from the member states at drafting a “successful” resolution and to do it “as soon as possible.” One last call to Amnesty International in New York and the deal was clinched.

A UN resolution must be sponsored by one or more member states. Because the 1998 resolution had been sponsored by the EU—and had met with criticisms of neocolonialism—we were looking for a different approach.

Hands Off Cain continued to work hard, especially pressuring the Italian government, which appeared to have ruled out seeking a Resolution at the UN before May. In March, a Declaration of Intent drafted by Italy was approved unanimously in Brussels by the twenty-seven countries of the EU and seemed to be leading to an international initiative against the death penalty. Inside the Italian Parliament, members of the Radical Party obtained a motion approved unanimously by the Commission for Foreign Affairs of the Chamber.

Italy, in short, was working to attain European consensus. It garnered support right away from France (led by Nicolas Sarkozy) and Germany (led by Angela Merkel), and sponsored the Declaration of Intent, which received widespread approval. It now had to develop consensus in the European Parliament. It stepped into the background and left the initiative to Germany and then to Portugal, which assumed the EU presidency beginning in July. Hands Off Cain also knew that chances for success with a Resolution were much better in the second semester than the first. But they took the approach that pressure today could help bring about success tomorrow. In Italian, there’s a saying: “Questa e’ la politica, bellezza!” “That’s politics, my dear!”

At the World Coalition’s General Assembly in Brussels that June, the picture was still unclear. Initially the key issues of the fall and year-end campaigns centered on targeting Asia’s retentionist countries. On the agenda was the approval of materials and tool-kits to be sent to the entire movement as a start to the mobilization that was to peak on the World Day Against the Death Penalty (after the first year it was decided that there would be two “world” events: one on October 10, the World Day Against the Death Penalty—later recognized by the EU as European Day Against the Death Penalty—and the other on November 30, Cities for Life Day). Asia was the center of the campaign, the graphics, and all the leaflets.

It was clear to me that it would have been a mistake to disconnect the grassroots movement from the member states’ strength of action under such circumstances. Sant’Egidio and Amnesty International took a different approach, affirming (after lunch) that the Resolution at the UN had become a key step for the eventual abolition of the death penalty. In the space of one day—one afternoon—members of the two groups agreed upon a radical change of strategy, making the Resolution a first priority and assigning the World Coalition a proactive role in the international lobbying effort. From then on, we held a weekly conference call to coordinate our efforts and implement a new method of operating. Amnesty International was bearing the expenses for the conference calls and keeping track of the different efforts made. Each organization was free to direct its activities towards the countries where they would be most effective.

In August we held a crucial meeting in Lisbon to draft the plan. On a splendid summer day at the Foreign Ministry, Portugal’s top human rights official sat at one end of a table around the rest of which sat representatives of Amnesty International for the World Coalition, Hands Off Cain, and myself for Sant’Egidio. We reached agreement on several points. The main one was this: The work for a Resolution was not to be merely a European initiative but a truly international one. At least ten co-sponsoring countries had to be drawn from five continents. The EU would help but would not officially take the lead. If possible, Russia and South Africa were to be involved from the beginning, together with countries like Mexico, Brazil, Angola, and Gabon (which had just agreed to abolish the death penalty); Rwanda, Burundi and Cambodia (which had experienced genocide); and the Philippines, East Timor, and New Zealand. In this way, the Resolution would have credible promoters and influential regional backers from its beginning. Canada had just pulled out as a co-sponsor, announcing its support but backing down from playing a proactive role.

Things were moving ahead—but we were still anxious about the difficulty of obtaining majority support for a Resolution in the UN General Assembly. In September we reviewed the draft resolution once again. And again. And again, as it underwent revision by sponsoring countries.

Somehow it was a special opportunity to join all the efforts and lobbying possibilities that we had.

On June 18, 2007, the Second International Conference of Ministers of Justice, organized by the Community of Sant’Egidio, had taken place at Julius Caesar Hall on the Capitoline Hill. On one wall there is a plaque that marks the decision taken in 1849 by the new Repubblica Romana—a Rome temporarily free of papal rule, before the national consolidation of Italy—to set aside the death penalty. So we were in good company. A large number of officials and MPs from abolitionist and “retentionist” countries in Africa were in attendance.70 The large African turnout had a sort of ripple effect; together with Sant’Egidio’s humanitarian activities in Africa, it increased a process of visits and institutional talks between African nations and in Rome that continues to this day.

Our annual interfaith World Meeting of Dialogue and Prayer for Peace in Naples in October 2007 offered another occasion for countries like Kazakhstan to enter the process of ending the death penalty, preparing the way for one more vote in favor of a UN Resolution in the process. As a large country in central Asia, Kazakhstan created momentum for other countries of Central Asia like Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, to vote in support of the Resolution. Uzbekistan was there already, thanks to the work of the brave Mothers Against the Death Penalty and their allies.

The text of the Resolution was reviewed by the original promoters of the initiative. It gained momentum and new co-sponsors after we limited references to the abolition of the death penalty as our final objective to a single, decisive sentence, avoiding a tone that might be considered “too aggressive.” The argument that the Resolution was “European and neocolonialist” was countered by the large number of sponsors: eighty-nine countries, the highest number ever.

Now was the time to act. Whoever had contacts, prestige, and cards to play, should lay them down.

In late October 2007, some of us traveled to UN headquarters. Don’t imagine crowds—we were a small group working with a meager budget. For several years we had focused our efforts on the approval of a Resolution against the death penalty in the General Assembly. Now the opportunity was at hand.

We brought with us five million signatures gathered by Sant’Egidio in 153 countries, and another 200,000 gathered by the World Coalition—all calling for a moratorium on capital punishment and the eventual abolition of the death penalty altogether.

The number of co-sponsors was growing, but it was hard to know what the real situation was. The prominent Italian minister Emma Bonino, one of the founders of Hands Off Cain, made remarks to the Italian press suggesting that the Resolution was at risk. She was worried that the European front would be divided at the time of presentation, or that the Resolution might be withdrawn before the vote as in 1998, or might not be presented at all. Or something else.

These were frantic hours for all of us. Myself, I was walking, calling, meeting, drinking coffee, checking in with each UN member state, synching up with the other members of our delegation, organizing the meeting with the President of the General Assembly, talking to the media, and learning to use a BlackBerry for the first time, out of necessity. Jetlagged, I couldn’t sleep anyway, so I spent the nights trying to get in touch with allies in Italy and other countries. It was worth it. More than anything, I was awaiting word about the fate of our Resolution. Each of us in the delegation worked for two days without stopping. I’ll never forget Speedy Rice, a distinguished professor and lawyer, overloaded with files and papers, as humble as his goal was lofty.

I had finally succeeded in arranging a meeting with the president of the UN General Assembly, Srgjan Kerim of Macedonia, for November 1. He had already met Emma Bonino. So it was clear to him that this was a meeting of peculiar importance. That day we delivered the five million signatures in a giant, hand-tooled leather book featuring signatures from 153 countries and signatures of many prominent people calling for an end to the death penalty.

Our delegation included Sister Helen Prejean; Speedy Rice, representing on this occasion the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; Renny Cushing of Murder Victims’ Families Against the Death Penalty; Yvonne Terlingen, Amnesty International’s representative to the UN; Elizabeth Zitrin of Death Penalty Focus; and the family members of crime victims. I led the delegation on behalf of the Community of Sant’Egidio. With the signatures, we hoped to make clear that our work was not just European or neocolonialist; our goals enjoyed broad support from ordinary people in countries all over the world.

The next day, November 2, 2007, Resolution 62/149, “A Moratorium on the Use of the Death Penalty,” was presented to the Third Committee of the UN General Assembly, where it would be put up for a vote in the middle of the month.

Ten states sponsored the Resolution, including Brazil, Portugal, New Zealand, Gabon, East Timor, and even Russia, which had employed the death penalty both under the czars and during the Communist era. All told, the total number of co-sponsors was eighty-seven (to become eighty-nine before the final vote)—the largest number of co-sponsors in the history of the General Assembly, I was told.

I returned to Rome hopeful and relieved that the first step had been taken. I followed the development of the issue through contacts in the missions to the UN of Italy and other countries. At Sant’Egidio, there are people who have good contacts with leaders in various parts of the world, the outcome of long-lasting efforts at peacemaking and humanitarian work. So many of those friends worked hard to bring their national leaders around, or, in some cases—Liberia, Malawi, Niger, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Eritrea, for example—to persuade them to abstain rather than voting against. We worked with counterparts in South Africa, Mozambique, Kyrgyzstan, Guatemala, and other countries to encourage a yes vote. And we double-checked with friends in Albania, Burundi, and Rwanda, making sure their support remained. Actions and intentions all over the world were building to the climax we had worked so hard to achieve.

As an example of the felicitous timing that bolstered our efforts, and of the peculiar “diplomacy” the Community of Sant’Egidio engaged in, it is useful to mention that Gabon was one of the countries that worked hardest at putting the results of the Second “Africa for Life” Conference in Rome into practice.

The pledges made on that occasion by Justice Minister Martin Mabala were translated into legislative actions, and abolition came sooner than expected, thanks to the intervention of President Omar Bongo Ondimba, who officially thanked Sant’Egidio for its commitment and efforts to promote the abolition of the death penalty. But the diplomatic effort, conducted through direct contacts on several different levels and the organization of public events in several African capitals, had even broader dimensions. In 2007 , there were direct talks with Lesotho’s Justice Minister, M. Mahase, in Maseru, as well as attempts in Mali to secure UN abstentions, including a meeting with President Amadou Toumani Tore aimed at achieving abolition by the end of 2008 and involving religious groups in an effort to gain popular support and organize a front of cultural support for alternative forms of justice. There was a similar effort in Niger, aimed first at obtaining an abstention at the UN and then at getting an abolitionist legislative process underway.

November 15 came. I followed the events at the UN from Sant’Egidio headquarters in Trastevere. I must say that the result was no foregone conclusion, and that the result, immensely favorable, had really been decided only in the last few days, thanks to the combined actions undertaken inside and outside the United Nations. An exceptional role was played by public and private Italians, by the generous and professional officials of states like New Zealand, Italy, and France, as well as the World Coalition.

The Resolution was presented by the ambassador from Gabon, so as to dispel the notion that it was a “white” and a “rich countries’” initiative. All in all, it was a joint effort that found a way of respecting the autonomy of individual countries. It was Italian diplomacy at its best, too, meeting the challenges of credibility, respect, and the ability to work with others, including the Portuguese presidency and all the European and non-European partners.

The United States and China, like India and Japan, chose to keep a low profile.

There was a clamor on the floor, led by Singapore and Egypt as well as some Caribbean countries, like Barbados. They sought to attach “killing amendments” to the bill so that it would not pass. But all of their amendments, written and oral, were defeated.

A last “killing amendment,” presented by Egypt, aimed at binding the abolition of the death penalty to the abolition of abortion. It was a clever move to try to create division among Western countries, touching a sensitive issue. The Philippine ambassador took the floor and said that his country, predominantly Catholic, did not agree with the amendment, since it was not in the agenda of the Resolution. The representative from the Vatican, an observer state, said the Vatican would refuse to countenance any exploitation of the issue of life, or any attempt to decide which life was worth saving. In my opinion, it was a crucial passage. From that moment on there was no more resistance.

When the vote was taken, the outcome was clear: the Resolution had passed decisively in the Third Committee, with ninety-nine member states in favor. This was one more than the simple majority we’d needed, and many more than the fifty-two countries who’d voted against. The United States voted against. China voted against and India voted against. Jamaica and many other Caribbean countries voted against. Egypt voted against. Somalia and Zimbabwe voted against. Afghanistan voted against. Saudi Arabia and Iran voted against. Singapore voted against. North Korea voted against.

The applause and enthusiasm on the floor were commensurate with the resistance that had held up the presentation and approval of such a document for almost fifteen years. Although the Resolution was non-binding, it set an international moral standard, asserting that the death penalty was a question of human rights, not just one of internal justice. Capital punishment became an issue for the international community, and not just the “good souls” at the NGOs. It engaged the United Nations and the Secretary General in the task of monitoring the situation and preparing an annual report on the implementation of the Resolution.

The General Assembly announced that the Resolution would come up for a vote in mid-December. I went to New York again, and on December 18, 2007, I was in the General Assembly Hall with members of the Italian Mission in seats behind the ambassador from the Republic of Italy, Giulio Terzi di Sant’Agata; Massimo D’Alema, the Foreign Affairs minister; and a hard worker at the Italian Mission, Stefano Gatti. Of course, Sergio D’Elia of Hands Off Cain was sitting in the same row.

Hard-line retentionist states, fearing a loss and wanting to minimize the damage, had arranged a small number of speeches followed by a single vote on the whole Resolution rather than a line-by-line vote. The promoter of the Resolution had agreed to it.

The vote was 102 member states in favor, fifty-four against, twenty-nine abstaining, and five absent.

The Resolution had passed, resoundingly, as if this were the most natural thing in the world!

In the intervening weeks, Burundi and Burkina Faso changed their positions to vote in favor of the text. Guinea Conakry, Cameroon, Tanzania, and the Central African Republic had decided to abstain rather than vote against. Ivory Coast had joined the group of co-sponsors on the last day before the vote. Blaise Compaoré, president of Burkina Faso, had made a pledge to Sant’Egidio that his country would abolish the death penalty as soon as the Resolution was approved (but the plan ran into trouble in the following years, when Compaoré attempted unsuccessfully to extend his presidential term before resigning in October 2014). It should be noted that Sant’Egidio had fostered a first accord to stop the civil war in Ivory Coast, and that later, with the Burkinabé President, had brokered the final peace accord that reunified Ivory Coast after five years. All this turned out to be useful at the decisive moment.

Once again, the United States had voted against the Resolution, and at first the American press seemed to snub the event. A crucial vote on a major human rights issue that is hugely controversial in the United States garnered just fifteen lines in the following day’s New York Times. Two days later, though, the Gray Lady spoke.

An editorial on the paper’s editorial pages—where the editorial line of the Times is established—summarized the events under the headline A Pause from Death:

The United States, as usual, lined up on the other side, with Iran, China, Pakistan, Sudan and Iraq. Together this blood brotherhood accounts for more than 90 percent of the world’s executions, according to Amnesty International. These countries’ devotion to their sovereignty is rigid, as is their perverse faith in execution as a criminal deterrent and an instrument of civilized justice. But out beyond Texas, Ohio, Virginia, Myanmar, Singapore, Saudi Arabia and Zimbabwe, there are growing numbers who expect better of humanity.

Many are not nations or states but groups of regular people, organizations like the Community of Sant’Egidio, a lay Catholic movement begun in Italy whose advocacy did much to bring about this week’s successful vote in the General Assembly.

I cannot speak for others, but I know that the night the Resolution passed was for me a moment of pure happiness—one of the purest such moments in my life. Here was a victory of David over Goliath, except that David was not just one person but many people, working and hoping together. I was just a spokesperson for this entire world of courageous people.

The Resolution for a Moratorium on the Death Penalty has come up in the United Nations several times since then. Each time it has passed, and each time the support for it has been greater than the last. Our hope is that someday support for the abolition of the death penalty will be truly universal.

Fotenotes:

70 The Justice Ministers of the following countries took part in the talks sponsored by the Community of Sant’Egidio, starting from the first round on November 28, 2005: Togo, Burkina Faso, Benin, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Congo Brazzaville, Madagascar, Kenya, Malawi, South Africa, Ghana, Tanzania, Burundi, Morocco, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Mozambique, Liberia, Lesotho, Rwanda, Central African Republic, Gabon, Gambia, Niger, and Ethiopia.