Reinstating the death penalty a violation of international law

are always a lethal mix. And since in any human society there is never a there is always the great likelihood that those without capital will get the punishment more quickly because it is they who cannot afford a good lawyer and a guarantee of due process. As a law, the death penalty directly contradicts the principle of inalienability of the basic human right to life, which is enshrined in most Constitutions of countries that signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”

To the arguments against the reimposition of the death penalty, an international law dimension has been added with the ratification by the Philippines on November 20, 2007 of the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).

The Human Rights Commission deserves credit for this development. The late Commissioner Quisumbling said: ”Today’s challenge to the Commission on Human Rights and the Right to Life advocates is to campaign for the ratification of the Second Optional Protocol and institutionalize efforts towards the approach of restorative justice.”

The ICCPR is one of the international Bill of Rights agreements, the others being the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The ICCPR commits its parties to respect the civil and political rights of individuals, including the right to life, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, electoral rights, and rights to due process and fair trial. The ICCPR was 12 years in the making, drafted in 1954, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on December 19, 1965, and entered into force on March 23, 1976. The Philippines was only one of six original signatories of the covenant. (The others were Costa Rica, Cyprus, Honduras, Israel, and Jamaica.) However, it took a long time for the Philippines to ratify the covenant, doing so only on January 23, 1987. O the Asean countries, Vietnam was ahead of the Philippines in ratifying(1982), but the Philippines was ahead of Cambodia (1992), Thailand (1997), Indonesia (2006) and Laos (2009). Malaysia, Myanmar, and Singapore are neither signatories nor parties.

The ICCPR has two optional protocols, The First Optional Protocol establishes an international complaints mechanism allowing individuals to complain to the UN Human Rights Committee about violations of the covenant. As of September 2013, the First Optional Protocol has 115 states parties, including the Philippines.

The Second Optional Protocol, adopted on December 15, 1989 and which took effect on July 11, 1991, abolishes the death penalty, although countries were permitted to make a reservation allowing for the use of the death penalty for most serious crimes of a military nature committed during wartime. As of December 2017, the Second Optional Protocol has 85 parties and two states which have - pines signed on September 20, 2006 It did not make any declarations or reservations to the Second Optional Protocol. So far, the Philippines is the only Asean state party to the Protocol.

About the Second Optional Protocol, the question has been asked: “Is the abolition of the death penalty in a Experts on the subject say, “the Second Optional Protocol is significant at the national level since it virtually