THE STATUS OF THE DEATH PENALTY UNDER INTERNATIONAL LAW

ABSTRACT

There is no universally-ratified single piece of binding international legislation prohibiting the use of the death penalty. However, there are many successive treaties, resolutions, protocols and pieces of legislation that impact the use of the death penalty regionally, nationally and internationally, all of which are moving in the direction of universal abolition of the death penalty, although not as quickly as could be hoped for. At the international level, a very important treaty provision relating to the death penalty is Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). A second treaty, the Second Protocol of the ICCPR, is in fact a multilateral treaty that formalizes the international norm of abolition of the death penalty. However, customary law informs the international legality of the use of the death penalty. Customary international law is used by both retentionist and abolitionist countries to defend their positions. Although there is no universal treaty to prohibit the death penalty, the worldwide trend of instruments of international law is moving in a distinctly abolitionist direction. 

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