A/HRC/42/28 decrease from 2017, when 23 nations carried out executions. 7 In some States, however, there have been moves towards resumption of the use of the death penalty, and the present report will focus on those situations. II. International law regarding resumption of the use of the death penalty 4. The right to life is recognized in article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights prohibits arbitrary deprivation of life and provides for specific conditions for the imposition of the death penalty with respect to countries that have not yet abolished it. The Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights provides in its article 1 (1) that no one within the jurisdiction of a State party to that Protocol may be executed. The Human Rights Committee recently clarified its view of the scope of State obligations under article 6 of the Covenant, including as regards the death penalty. In its general comment No. 36 (2018) on the right to life, the Committee stated that when States parties to the Covenant had abolished the death penalty, by amending their domestic laws, becoming parties to the Second Optional Protocol to the Covenant or adopting another international instrument obligating them to abolish the death penalty, such abolition was “legally irrevocable” and States were barred from reintroducing it (para. 34). 5. The Human Rights Committee also took the position that when a State party to the Covenant had not yet abolished the death penalty, it could not introduce or reintroduce the death penalty for a crime which, at the time of ratification of the Covenant or at any time thereafter, had not entailed the death penalty. Neither could States remove legal conditions from existing offences that would permit imposition of the death penalty in circumstances in which it had not previously been imposable. 8 6. Should a State nonetheless reintroduce the death penalty for a particular offence, it cannot be applied retroactively. The principle of legality enshrined in article 11 (2) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and article 15 of the Covenant provides that there can be no penalty without law. As a result, the death penalty can never be imposed if it was not provided by law for the offence at the time of its commission. 9 7. The Human Rights Committee further expressed the view that it was contrary to the object and purpose of article 6 of the Covenant for States parties to take steps to increase de facto the rate and extent to which they resorted to the death penalty. 10 In the Committee’s view, article 6 (6), reaffirms the position that States parties that are not yet totally abolitionist should be on an irrevocable path towards complete eradication of the death penalty, de facto and de jure, in the foreseeable future. 11 In accordance with that view, it would appear that resumption of the use of the death penalty after a long de facto moratorium on its use would necessarily increase the rate of executions, and would therefore potentially be in conflict with the object and purpose of article 6. 12 7 8 9 10 11 12 Amnesty International Global Report 2018, p. 10; and Amnesty International Global Report: Death Sentences and Executions 2017, p. 38. General comment No. 36, para. 34. See also International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, art. 6 (2); Human Rights Committee, general comment No. 36, para. 38; and safeguards guaranteeing protection of the rights of those facing the death penalty, para. 2. General comment No. 36, para. 50. Ibid. See also Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, article 18 of which provides that States that have signed a treaty shall refrain from acts which would defeat the object and purpose of the treaty. 3