A/HRC/36/27 resumed executions. Persons sentenced to death and their family members had inflicted on them severe and unjustifiable mental and physical suffering, including as a result of inadequate information about the timing of executions, the failure to return the body to families for burial and a lack of information about the location of the burial. Referring to the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights: Implementing the United Nations “Protect, Respect and remedy” Framework, the High Commissioner commended the steps taken by pharmaceutical companies to prevent prison authorities from purchasing medication for use in lethal injections. Use of the death penalty should end, especially since it was applied in a manner that was capricious and frequently discriminatory and failed to demonstrate any deterrent effect beyond that of other punishments. 5. In his opening remarks, the Minister of State for European Affairs of France noted that the death penalty was being applied in over 20 countries and that there had been a record number of executions over the previous two years, following breaks in moratoriums and calls for the reintroduction of the death penalty. Some were trying to justify the reintroduction of capital punishment by invoking security concerns, such as terrorism or drug trafficking, despite the fact that the death penalty had no deterrent effect and was not a guarantee of security; moreover, renouncing capital punishment did not preclude a firm response to terrorism. The Minister concurred with the High Commissioner in highlighting that the use of the death penalty led to violations of the human rights of those convicted and of their relatives, and added that this had been mentioned in the reports of the SecretaryGeneral and affirmed by the Human Rights Council. The death penalty was inhuman, unjust and ineffective. Hopefully, the panel discussion would encourage the Human Rights Council to take action on the subject. Abolishing the death penalty required the participation of many actors. The Minister paid tribute to the work carried out in that regard by representatives of civil society, journalists, human rights defenders and parliamentarians. 6. While international law did not explicitly equate the death penalty with torture, it did view it as incompatible with the right to life. Whatever the methods used and whatever the circumstances in which the executions were carried out, the death penalty always led to the intense physical and psychological suffering of those convicted and their relatives. The use of the death penalty did not respect human dignity and was undeniably cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, a view already expressed by the European Court of Human Rights. The fight against the death penalty was a political struggle and a question of principle. Respect for human rights motivated France to fight for the universal abolition of the death penalty and the absolute prohibition of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. The fact that two thirds of States had renounced capital punishment (in law or in practice), compared to 16 States 40 years ago, indicated that, despite recent setbacks, the trend was towards the abolition of the death penalty. Abolition initiatives have been launched in all regions and progress in Africa was particularly encouraging, confirming that the issue was one of principle, not culture. National judicial systems were urged to strengthen efforts to abolish the death penalty. III. Contribution of the panellists 7. In her introduction, the moderator of the panel reiterated that the trend was in the direction of abolition, as over 160 States had either abolished the death penalty, had imposed a de jure or de facto moratorium on the use of the death penalty, did not actually practise it or did not have anyone on death row. In the Commonwealth Caribbean, no one had been executed since 2008 and hardly any countries had issued death sentences. Jamaica had not issued a death sentence since 2010 and no one there was on death row. That was in marked contrast to the situation between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, when the brutality of colonialism included the indiscriminate use of capital punishment in the Caribbean region. The retention of the death penalty was a colonial throwback. The prevalence of class and racial discrimination in the application of the death penalty had led to the persecution of the poor and the most marginalized. The psychological harm it caused and the potential for wrongful convictions and executions meant there was a need for exacting standards and a heightened level of due process in capital cases. Rising crime rates in some societies had led to calls for an increase in the use of the death penalty but the 3