A/HRC/30/18 the American Convention on Human Rights to Abolish the Death Penalty was adopted in 1990. While the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, which was adopted in 1981, does not make any specific reference to the death penalty, the African Commission is in the process of developing an optional protocol to the Charter on the abolition of the death penalty in Africa. 14. About half of the 102 countries and territories in the world that, to date, have abolished the death penalty for all crimes, enshrined its prohibition in their constitutions, often making explicit the link with the rights to life and physical integrity.10 For instance, the Constitution of Armenia states that “everyone shall have a right to life”, and “no one shall be condemned to the death penalty or executed”; the Constitution of the Plurinational State of Bolivia provides that “every person has the right to life and physical, psychological and sexual integrity” and “the death penalty does not exist”; the Constitution of Cambodia holds that “everybody shall have the right to life, freedom and personal security. Capital punishment is prohibited”; the Constitution of Colombia stipulates that “the right to life is inviolable” and “there will be no death penalty”; the Constitution of Côte d’Ivoire states that “the rights of the human person are inviolable” and “any punishment leading to the deprivation of human life is forbidden”; the Constitution of Honduras states that “the right to life is inviolable, and the death penalty is prohibited”; and the Constitution of Kyrgyzstan states that “everyone shall have an inalienable right to life” and “no one may be arbitrarily deprived of life; the death penalty is prohibited”. 15. Furthermore, several national courts have found the death penalty to violate the right to life. The Albanian Constitutional Court abrogated the death penalty as incompatible with its 1998 Constitution, stating that “the death penalty is a denial of the right to life and constitutes inhuman and cruel punishment”. 11 The Hungarian Constitutional Court declared that the death penalty violates the “inherent right to life” provided under article 54 of the country’s Constitution, and thereby abolished the death penalty for all crimes in Hungary. 12 The Constitutional Court of Lithuania declared that the Criminal Code provision on the death penalty contradicted the Constitution, which stipulates that the right to life shall be protected by law.13 The South African Constitutional Court also used the right to life argument as reasoning for declaring that the death penalty violated the Constitution.14 The Constitutional Court of Ukraine declared the death penalty unconstitutional and the laws providing for it void, by referring to the right to life. It noted that, unlike the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Ukrainian Constitution does not explicitly allow for the death penalty as an exception to the right to life. 15 Several other States have also referred to the right to life as key for the abolition of the death penalty (see, for example, A/63/293, para. 17 and A/HRC/27/26, para. 25).16 16. With regard to States in which the death penalty is still used, international human rights law, including article 6 (2) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, “imposes stringent requirements that must be met for judicial killing not to be regarded as an arbitrary deprivation of life and therefore unlawful” (see A/67/275, para. 13). Article 6 (2) of the Covenant requires that, in countries that have not yet abolished the death penalty, the application of the death penalty be limited to the “most 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 6 For a discussion on how the death penalty violates the right to life, see Hugo Adam Bedau, “Capital Punishment and the Right to Life”, Michigan State Law Review, vol. 2011, No. 3, pp. 505–522. See www.deathpenaltyproject.org/legal-resources/authorities-database/search/?id=1111. See www.deathpenaltyproject.org/legal-resources/authorities-database/search/?id=1175. See www.deathpenaltyproject.org/legal-resources/authorities-database/search/?id=1113. See www.saflii.org/za/cases/ZACC/1995/3.html. See www.codices.coe.int/NXT/gateway.dll/CODICES/full/eur/ukr/eng/ukr-2000-1-003. The original contributions are on file with the Secretariat and are available for consultation.