The United Nations General Assembly has at last voted for a global moratorium on the death penalty. While the resolution is nonbinding and its symbolic weight was hardly mentioned in US media, for those who have been trying to move the world away from lethal revenge as government policy, this was a milestone.
The resolution had failed repeatedly in the 1990s, but this time the vote was 104 to 54, with 29 nations abstaining. Progress has come in Europe and Africa. Nations like Senegal, Burundi, Gabon, even Rwanda, shamed by genocide, have decided to reject the death penalty, as official barbarism. The United States, lined up on the other side, with Iran(!), China, Pakistan, Sudan(!) and Iraq(!). Together this blood brotherhood accounts for more than 90% of the world’s executions, according to Amnesty International. Finally global conscience is turning against execution as a criminal deterrent and an instrument of civilized justice. Peace.
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