A/HRC/33/20 I. Introduction 1. Pursuant to Human Rights Council decision 18/117, the present report is submitted to update previous reports on the question of the death penalty, including the most recent quinquennial report of the Secretary-General (E/2015/49 and Corr.1). Pursuant to Human Rights Council resolution 22/11, the report also includes information on the human rights of children of parents sentenced to the death penalty or executed. 2. The report covers the period from April 2015 to June 2016 and is based on information received from States and other relevant sources, including national human rights institutions, United Nations agencies, United Nations country teams, international and regional intergovernmental bodies and non-governmental organizations. Attention is drawn to the forthcoming report of the Secretary-General to the General Assembly on a moratorium on the use of the death penalty, which will outline national and international efforts made towards the implementation of General Assembly resolution 69/186 on a moratorium on the use of the death penalty, in which the General Assembly calls upon States, inter alia, to respect international standards that provide safeguards guaranteeing protection of the rights of those facing the death penalty, in particular the minimum standards, as set out in the annex to Economic and Social Council resolution 1984/50 of 25 May 1984. II. Changes in law and practice 3. Changes in law include new legislation abolishing or reinstating the death penalty, restricting it or expanding its scope, as well as ratification of international and regional human rights treaties that provide for the abolition of the death penalty. Changes in practice comprise non-legislative measures, including executive and judicial measures, reflecting a new approach regarding the use of the death penalty. A. Abolition of the death penalty, or initiatives taken for its abolition, including commitments provided to abolish it 4. Some 170 States have abolished or introduced a moratorium on the death penalty either in law or in practice, or have suspended executions for more than ten years. In particular, the Congo, Fiji, Madagascar, Mongolia, Nauru and Suriname abolished the death penalty during the reporting period. Côte d’Ivoire enacted a law to eliminate capital punishment from its penal code after it was abolished under the Constitution in 2000. The new Constitution of Nepal, which came into force in September 2015, states that no law shall be made providing for the death penalty. In the United States of America, the State of Nebraska abolished the death penalty. 5. In several other States, legislative and/or judicial processes to abolish the death penalty were initiated. For instance, Burkina Faso, Comoros, Guinea, Kenya and the Republic of Korea considered bills to abolish the death penalty. In early 2016, the Supreme Court of Zimbabwe heard two challenges to the death penalty, regarding its constitutionality1 and the humanity of extended periods on death row.2 1 Zimbabwe, Farai Lawrence Ndlovu and Wisdom Gochera v. Minister of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs. 3