Britain to help Caribbean countries abolish death penalty

TIMES INT'L

The British government said it will continue to work with a number of countries, including those in the Caribbean, to abolish the death penalty.

In its newly-released “Human Rights and Democracy Report”, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) said that the United Kingdom’s longstanding policy to oppose the death penalty in all circumstances remains as a matter of principle.

“We consider that its use undermines human dignity, that there is no conclusive evidence that it has any value as a deterrent, and that any miscarriage of justice is irreversible and irreparable.”

Global abolition of the death penalty continues to be a priority for the UK government. “The international trend towards abolition of the death penalty was maintained in 2011, and we are keen to see this trend continue,” the FCO said in the report. It noted that last October, the government published an updated Strategy for Abolition of the Death Penalty, setting out its three goals to support the overarching objective of global abolition of the death penalty.

It said among the goals are increasing the number of abolitionist countries or countries with a moratorium on the use of the death penalty, and ensuring that the European Union (EU) minimum standards on the death penalty, such as fair trial rights and non-execution of juveniles, are met in countries which retain the death penalty.

“Following careful review, our priority countries – China, the U. S., Belarus, Commonwealth Caribbean and Iran – remain the same,” London said. It added that it has raised the death penalty bilaterally with a number of these priority countries at both official and ministerial levels, including Japan, the Commonwealth Caribbean, Belarus, and Singapore.

London said that it would continue to work with the European Union Commission to improve the effectiveness of the various strategies against the death penalty in 2012. “We believe that the UK has most directly impacted on progress towards global abolition of the death penalty through our project work,” the government said.

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