Statement by His Excellency
Silvano M. Tomasi
Permanent Observer of the Holy
See to the United Nations and Other International Organizations in Geneva
at the 28th
Session of the Human Rights Council
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Item 1 - Biennial High-Level Panel on
“The Question of the Death
Penalty”
4 March 2015
Mr.
Chairman,
The Delegation of the Holy See is pleased to take part in this first
biennial high-level panel discussion on the question of the death penalty and joins
an increasing number of States in supporting the fifth UN General Assembly
resolution calling for a global moratorium on the use of the death penalty. Public opinion and support of the various provisions
aimed at abolishing the death penalty, or suspending its application, is
growing. This provides a strong momentum which this Delegation hopes will
encourage States still applying the death penalty to move in the direction of
its abolition.
The position of the Holy See on this issue has been more clearly
articulated in the past decades. In
fact, twenty years ago, the issue was framed within the proper ethical context of
defending the inviolable dignity of the human person and the role of the
legitimate authority to defend in a just manner the common good of society.[1] Considering the practical circumstances found
in most States, as a result of steady improvements in the organization of the
penal system, it appears evident nowadays that means other than the death
penalty “… are sufficient to defend human lives against an aggressor and to
protect public order and the safety of persons.”[2]
For that reason, “public authority must
limit itself to such means, because they better correspond to the concrete
conditions of the common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the
human person.”[3]
Political and legislative initiatives being promoted in a growing number
of countries to eliminate the death penalty and to continue the substantive
progress made in conforming penal law both to the human dignity of prisoners
and the effective maintenance of public order are moving in the right direction.[4]
Pope Francis has further emphasized that the legislative and judicial
practice of the State authority must always be guided by the “primacy of human
life and the dignity of the human person.”
He noted as well “the possibility of judicial error and the use made by
totalitarian and dictatorial regimes… as a means of suppressing political
dissidence or of persecuting religious and cultural minorities.”[5]
Thus, respect for the dignity of every human person and the common good
are the two pillars on which the position of the Holy See has developed. These
principles converge with a similar development in international human rights
law and jurisprudence. Moreover, we should take into account that no clear
positive effect of deterrence results from the application of the death penalty
and that the irreversibility of this punishment does not allow for eventual
corrections in the case of wrongful convictions.
Mr. Chairman,
My Delegation contends that bloodless means of defending the common good
and upholding justice are possible, and calls on States to adapt their penal
system to demonstrate their adhesion to a more humane form of punishment. As for those countries that claim it is not
yet feasible to relinquish this practice, my Delegation encourages them to
strive to become capable of doing so.
In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, the Holy See Delegation fully supports the
efforts to abolish the use of the death penalty. In order to arrive at this
desired goal, these steps need to be
taken: 1) to sustain the social reforms that would enable society to implement
the abolition of the death penalty; 2) to
improve prison conditions, to ensure respect for the human dignity of the
people deprived of their freedom.[6]
Thank
you, Mr. Chairman.
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