Seminar: Participants urged Morocco to ratify 2nd Optional Protocol to ICCPR and abolish death penalty
The National Human Rights Council hosted, on Friday, June 20th, 2014, a seminar on the death penalty, held in partnership with the Network of Lawyers against the Death Penalty. The participants urged Morocco to ratify the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and abolish the death penalty, stressing that it is a cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment that violates the most fundamental human rights: the right to life, protected under in the Moroccan constitution.
In addition to the Council and the Network of Lawyers against the Death Penalty, representatives of the Network of Parliamentarians against the Death Penalty and the Moroccan Coalition for the Abolition of the Death Penalty and other civil society stakeholders, lawyers, jurists, artists and creators took part in this seminar.
Opening the seminar, Mohamed Essabbar, CNDH Secretary General, reaffirmed CNDH’s position for the abolition of the death penalty. This position, he said, finds its reasons in the constitution, which honors the right to life, the recommendation of the Equity and Reconciliation Commission to ratify the 2nd Optional Protocol to ICCPR, and CNDH’s efforts in the harmonization of the national legislations with the international instruments ratified by Morocco.
CNDH Chairman addressed Parliament on human rights in Morocco, on Monday, June 16th, 2014. Mr. El Yazami called in this “special session”, attended by parliamentarians, ministers, and the Head of the Government, for a calm and rational dialogue on the abolition of the death penalty. He reaffirmed the Council’s position for the abolition of the death penalty. Our country should vote for the resolution of the United Nations General Assembly establishing a moratorium on the execution, with a view to abolition, he said.
In October 2008, the CNDH held an international symposium on the death penalty, in Rabat, in partnership with Ensemble contre la peine de mort (Together against the Death Penalty). Parliamentarians, civil society stakeholders, judges, lawyers, government officials, academics, experts, scientists and national institutions and human rights defenders took part in this symposium. The death penalty was discussed from different views: the Islamic jurisprudence, Moroccan law and criminology. The contributions were published in a book that has become a reference for the debate about the death penalty in Morocco.