December 22, 2010: The United Nations General Assembly yesterday approved a new resolution in favour of a universal moratorium on the death penalty. It is the third time after the historic resolution approved in December 2007 and then again in December 2008.
108 countries voted in favour, with 41 against and 36 abstentions (another 7 countries were absent at the time of the vote). It recorded a decisive step forward compared to 2007 when in a plenary assembly the votes in favour were 104, with 54 against and 29 abstentions (with 5 absent at the time of the vote). Another step forward was taken also in respect to the second vote on the pro moratorium Resolution in December 2008 when there were 105 in favour, 47 against and 34 abstentions (6 were absent at the time of the vote).
The most significant political data regarding the favourable is that of 6 countries that in 2008 voted against (Kiribati, the Maldives and Mongolia) or abstained (Bhutan, Guatemala and Togo) or the abstentions of 4 countries (Comoros, Nigeria, the Solomon Islands and Thailand) that in 2008 voted against. The number of cosponsors of the Resolution also increased, 90 in total, three doing so for the first time: Cambodia, Russia and Madagascar.
The only new part of the text of the Resolution concerns the request – in part contained in the 2007 text – directing the member states to ‘make information available relevant to the use of the death penalty to allow an informed and transparent national debate.'
“The new vote at the UN in favour of the moratorium records the positive evolution happening for more than ten years around the world towards the end of the State-Cain and the ending of the fake and archaic principle of an eye for an eye,” Hands Off Cain secretary Sergio D’Elia said.
