Capital Punishment: Transparency
This is an excerpt from a report of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions.
Web links to this page are welcome, but formal citations should be to the official report, E/CN.4/2005/7.
57. In a considerable number of countries information concerning the death penalty is cloaked in secrecy. No statistics are available as to executions, or as to the numbers or identities of those detained on death row, and little if any information is provided to those who are to be executed or to their families. Such secrecy is incompatible with human rights standards in various respects. It undermines many of the safeguards which might operate to prevent errors or abuses and to ensure fair and just procedures at all stages. It denies the human dignity of those sentenced, many of whom are still eligible to appeal, and it denies the rights of family members to know the fate of their closest relatives.
58. Moreover, secrecy prevents any informed public debate about capital punishment within the relevant society. In a reply to the Special Rapporteur in 2003 the Government of China observed that the “ultimate worldwide abolition [of the death penalty] will be the inevitable consequence of historical development”, and that “[e]ach country should decide whether to retain or abolish the death sentence on the basis of its own actual circumstances and the aspirations of its people”.19 It is clear, however, that such decisions and aspirations cannot be formed in a state of ignorance about the facts.
59. Countries that have maintained the death penalty are not prohibited by international law from making that choice, but they have a clear obligation to disclose the details of their application of the penalty. For a Government to insist on a principled defence of the death penalty but to refuse to divulge to its own population the extent to which, and the reasons for which, it is being applied is unacceptable. The Commission should, as a matter of priority, insist that every country that uses capital punishment undertake full and accurate reporting of all instances thereof, and should publish a consolidated report prepared on at least an annual basis.
Recommendations
87. Transparency is essential wherever the death penalty is applied. Secrecy as to those executed violates human rights standards. Full and accurate reporting of all executions should be published, and a consolidated version prepared on at least an annual basis.
19 Reply to a communication dated 9 December 2002.