Abolition of the death penalty : a process in motion

Following slavery, capital punishment is slowly finding its way toward abolition. This trend is manifested both in international criminal law norms and international human rights norms.In the international criminal law field, capital punishment, accepted under the Nuremberg and Tokyo Charters, was rejected half a century later in the Statute of the International Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia, then in the Statute of the International Tribunal for Rwanda, and most recently in the Rome Statute.Parallel to developments in the international criminal law field, a similar evolution was experienced in the area of international human rights. The trend towards abolition in the human rights field began with the restriction of the death penalty application to a certain group of people and crimes. However, a European human rights instrument, Protocol No. 6 to the ECHR, shifted the trend from restriction to abolition of the death penalty.For the abolitionist cause to succeed, the abolitionist trend should be accepted by retentionist countries such as the US and the Islamic states of the Middle East and Africa. (Abstract shortened by UMI.