Along with the New Zealand Government, we launched a global initiative to create a moratorium on all executions, during an event at Parliament Buildings to mark World Day against the Death Penalty on 10 October 2007.

 

To mark the day Prime Minister Helen Clark and Amnesty International’s NZ Executive Director at the time, Ced Simpson, climbed a flight of steps that had been transformed into a death penalty abolition timeline. The timeline showed the history of death penalty abolition from 1863, when Venezuela became the first abolitionist country, to the present day when 139 countries have abolished the death penalty in practice or in law.

 

At the press conference Helen Clark announced the New Zealand Government’s intention to co-author the UN resolution calling for a global moratorium on the use of the death penalty. Along with nine other countries New Zealand took a lead. The world listened and in December 2007, 104 nations voted to adopt the global moratorium. However, while a total of 139 countries have abolished the death penalty in practice and law, 58 countries retain this barbaric practice.

 

New Zealand removed the death penalty for all offences except treason from its statute book in a conscience vote in 1961. We, during the Chairmanship of Peter Wood, took the lead in campaigning to have the remaining vestiges of the death penalty removed from the NZ statute book, by use of a Private Member's Bill. The Bill was passed and treason was no longer punishable by death from 26 Dec 1989 when the Bill came into effect.

 

Sixty years ago New Zealand championed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which stands for the rights of all individuals to be free and equal in dignity and rights. Article 3 protects the right to life – which the use of the death penalty breaches.