A/HRC/42/25 I. Introduction 1. Pursuant to its resolution 26/2, the Human Rights Council held its third biennial high-level panel discussion on the question of the death penalty on 26 February 2019, at its fortieth session. The aim of the panel discussion, as specified in resolution 36/17, was to address human rights violations related to the use of the death penalty, in particular with respect to the rights to non-discrimination and equality. 2. The panel was chaired by the President of the Human Rights Council, Coly Seck. Opening statements were delivered by the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, and the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs and European Affairs, and of Defence in charge of Beliris and of the federal cultural institutions of Belgium, Didier Reynders. The panel was moderated by the Chair of the Human Rights Committee, Yuval Shany. The panellists were the Minister for Foreign Affairs of Nepal, Pradeep Kumar Gyawali; the Director of the Justice Institute Guyana, Melinda Janki; and lawyer and co-founder of the Mauritanian Human Rights Association, Fatimata M’Baye. II. Opening remarks and statements 3. In his introductory remarks, Mr. Seck reminded the Council that the panel discussion was being held pursuant to its resolutions 26/2 and 36/17. Resolution 36/17 stipulated that the theme of the discussion would be violations related to the use of the death penalty, in particular with respect to the rights to non-discrimination and equality. 4. In her opening remarks, the High Commissioner stressed that the United Nations opposed the use of the death penalty everywhere and in all circumstances. The international trend was towards abolition, and some 170 States with a variety of legal systems, traditions, cultures and religions had either abolished the death penalty in law or did not carry out executions in practice. A record 121 States had voted in favour of General Assembly resolution 73/175 on a moratorium on the use of the death penalty in December 2018. 5. The High Commissioner noted that discrimination was never more evident than when one looked at the persons on death row. Prison visits conducted by her Office consistently revealed that death rows were disproportionately populated by the poor and economically vulnerable; members of ethnic minorities; persons with psychosocial or intellectual disabilities; foreign nationals; indigenous persons; and other marginalized members of society. Poverty, illiteracy and language barriers often resulted in non-respect of the right to effective legal representation of defendants facing the death penalty. Too often, foreign nationals were not promptly informed of their right to consular assistance. Any one of those breaches of due process rendered the application of this most severe and irreversible punishment arbitrary. 6. The High Commissioner noted that some persons were sentenced to death simply for having expressed an opinion, for membership of a political group, for exercising their freedom of religion, which included the freedom to leave a religion, or for being part of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) community. Condemning a person to death for conduct that should not be criminalized was never compatible with a State’s human rights obligations. Women faced gender discrimination in the application of the death penalty, and a recent report by the Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide showed that they were judged not only on the basis of their crime, but because they were perceived to have betrayed traditional gender roles. 1 Some women were sentenced to death for perceived moral transgressions, such as adultery, or even for witchcraft. Women sentenced to death for murdering their partners had often been victims of severe and repeated domestic abuse for years, and had lived in fear for their lives, but the law in their countries recognized self-defence as a legal defence only in the case of direct and imminent lethal threat. 1 2 Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide, Judged for More than Her Crime: A Global Overview of Women Facing the Death Penalty (2018).