A/HRC/4/20
page 27
observance, practice and teaching; hold opinions without interference; express him or herself
freely; seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds; assemble peacefully;
associate with others; form or join a trade union; marry and found a family; take part in the
conduct of public affairs; to vote, and to stand as a candidate for election. ICCPR, arts. 12, 17,
18, 19, 21, 22, 23, 25. The exercise of these and other human rights cannot be punished with
death; indeed, such conduct cannot be punished at all. Even when the enjoyment of a right might
be subjected to a legitimate limitation or derogation, its exercise cannot be considered to rise to
the level of a “most serious crime” for which the death penalty might be imposed. See also
E/CN.4/2006/53/Add.1, pp. 307-317 (Yemen); E/CN.4/1998/68/Add.1, paras. 221-227 (Islamic
Republic of Iran); Nigel Rodley, The Treatment of Prisoners Under International Law (2nd ed.
1999), p. 220.
88
A/2929, p. 82, para. 1.
89
A/2929, p. 82, para. 1.
90
A/2929, p. 82, para. 2. This same basic debate also played out over the more specific concept
of the most serious crimes. The term “most serious crimes” was “criticized as lacking precision”
and some suggested the explicit exclusion of particular categories of offences from the concept.
A/2929, page 84, para. 6. However, exhaustively enumerating examples proved as difficult in
the abstract as it had under the broader rubric of arbitrary deprivation.
91
A/2929, p. 82, para. 2; see also E/CN.4/SR.140, paras. 2, 13.
92
A/2929, p. 82, para. 3.
93
See, e.g., E/CN.4/SR.140, para. 3 (“The precise significance of the word ‘arbitrarily’ had been
very fully discussed by the Commission on Human Rights and by the Third Committee of the
General Assembly and it had been concluded that it had a precise enough meaning. It had been
used in several articles in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and referred both to the
legality and the justice of the act.”).
94
On the contemplated role of the HRC and of world public opinion, see, e.g., E/CN.4/SR.139,
para. 8: “As the Commission intended to include implementation measures in the covenant, it
would provide for an international body to focus world public opinion on the acts of countless
signatories to the covenant. That international body and public opinion would easily judge what
was arbitrary and what was not.”
On the role of States, see, e.g., E/CN.4/SR.139, para. 45: “In time a sort of jurisprudence on the
subject would certainly be established based on the comments of governments, and it would
subsequently be possible to supplement the covenant in the light of that jurisprudence.” The
sense of this observation was clarified by the delegate’s observation that the list of particular
non-arbitrary deprivations of life proposed by some for inclusion in the text of the ICCPR would,
despite its exclusion, “form one of the basic elements in any jurisprudence of that sort.”
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