A/HRC/36/27 number of executions was already high: at least 1,634 people had been executed in 25 States in 2015.3 The moderator noted that some States had executed individuals under 18 years of age and that the main methods of execution qualified as torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. In accordance with article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, every human being had the inherent right to life, a right that should be protected by law. No one should be arbitrarily deprived of his or her life. The ideology, history and contemporary politics that shaped the application of the death penalty needed to be questioned and the stories of those wrongfully convicted and of the families who witnessed executions needed to be told in order to mobilize support for the abolition of the death penalty. 8. The former President of Tunisia spoke of the some 200 death penalty case files he had looked at involving individuals who had been awaiting death in deplorable conditions with no possibility of amnesty or of having their sentences commuted. He underlined the psychological torture that such individuals had been subjected to, some for over a decade. He said that it was preferable to commute a death sentence to life imprisonment as a first step towards a presidential amnesty. In his remarks, he also focused on the attempts to abolish the death penalty in Tunisia, the difficulties faced, the moratorium that had been put in place and the fact that the death penalty had not been applied since 1991, adding that in Tunisia the efforts to abolish the death penalty amounted to a political and cultural battle. One interpretation of the Koran viewed the killing of one person as killing the whole of humanity. He noted that some States had recently abolished the death penalty and said he hoped that Muslim countries would follow suit. Abolition represented a step in the progress of civilization, it was not a political issue. 9. The Chair of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights explained why the death row phenomenon constituted torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment and spoke of the role of the National Commission in addressing the death row phenomenon. The Constitution of Kenya guaranteed the right to life, but that right was not absolute and Kenya retained the punishment of death by hanging for capital offences such as treason, murder, robbery or attempted robbery with violence. That said, Kenya had had a de facto moratorium on the death penalty since 1987, leading to an increase in the number of individuals on death row and to overcrowding. Efforts had been made to decongest prisons through the commutation of death sentences to life imprisonment: the President had commuted 223 death sentences to life imprisonment in 2003, 4,000 in 2009 and 2,747 in 2016. Although some death row inmates had been pleased with the commutations, many of them had refused to work, to be rehabilitated or to be reintegrated into the prison population, stating they had been ready to die for many years. In a 2011 survey of death row inmates, the National Commission had found that, given the weaknesses at various levels of the judicial process and the lack of adequate legal representation for those charged with capital offences, there was a real likelihood of miscarriage of justice and an extremely high possibility of wrongful conviction. 10. The Government of Kenya had acknowledged, in reports, that extended stays on death row caused undue mental anguish, suffering, psychological trauma and anxiety and constituted inhuman treatment. A public inquiry was being conducted by the Power of Mercy Advisory Committee, with support from the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, to collect the views of Kenyan citizens regarding the abolition of the death penalty. Nevertheless, Kenyan courts continued to sentence offenders convicted of capital offences to death because that was the mandatory sentence for such offences. The Chair of the National Commission gave an overview of Kenyan jurisprudence on the issue of the constitutionality of presidential commutations of death sentences to life imprisonment and highlighted the disagreement between the Court of Appeal and the lower courts. In 2015, the National Commission, together with civil society stakeholders who were members of a coalition campaigning against the death penalty, had sent a petition to the Supreme Court questioning the constitutionality of the death penalty; the Supreme Court was expected to issue directions for the establishment of new jurisprudence. The National Commission had 3 4 See https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2016/04/Alarming-surge-in-recorded-executions-seeshighest-toll-in-more-than-25-years/.