EU calls for making efforts to abolish capital punishment
By Muhammad Ali Malik

ISLAMABAD—The International Community commemorates World Day against the Death Penalty on every 10th of October.
All the Member States of the European Union and the European Commission strongly opposed to the death penalty in all circumstances, as a cruel and inhumane punishment and as a violation of the fundamental human right to life.
The EU considers that the abolition of the death penalty contributes to the enhancement of human dignity and the progressive development of human rights. The EU is a lead institutional actor and lead donor in the fight against the death penalty, and is actively engaged in promoting the abolition of the death penalty with different instruments at its disposal, as set out in the “Guidelines on EU policy towards third countries on the death penalty”, adopted in 1998.
The EU works towards moratoria of the application of the death penalty and, in due course, abolition and ratification of the relevant international UN and other instruments. On the political level, initiatives include general representations, particularly where a country’s use of the death penalty is likely to be ended or reintroduced, and individual representations where the EU is made aware of individual death penalty sentences which violate the UN-agreed “minimum standards”.
At the multilateral level, the EU has in the past initiated resolutions at the UN Commission on Human Rights (now Human Rights Council), as well as making international declarations and statements. In June 2007, the External Relations Council decided that the EU would introduce, in the framework of a cross-regional alliance, a resolution against the death penalty at the 62nd UN General Assembly.
The EU’s political commitment in this field is matched by substantial project support given under the European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR), an initiative that has funded around 30 anti-death penalty projects worldwide since 1994, with an overall budget of about €15 million.
In addition, 14 projects are currently ongoing, globally amounting to an additional budget estimated at around €9 million. Examples of these interventions are the “Global Action to Abolish the Death Penalty” and the “Développement du mouvement abolitionniste mondial”. The EU has also launched a campaign named “Death has no appeal” this year.
In an international conference held the other day in Lisbon, organised by the Portuguese Presidency of the EU with the support of the European Commission, leading personalities from the political sphere and civil society reaffirmed Europe’s commitment to the worldwide abolition of the death penalty and called for a global moratorium on executions.