A/HRC/36/27 29. Representatives also said that national human rights institutions had a role to play in encouraging the abolition of the death penalty or the imposition of a moratorium by advising Governments, by engaging with civil society and the public to foster debate and by monitoring trials and compliance with international human rights law and standards. The challenges faced by national human rights institutions in carrying out such work included resource and capacity gaps and their inability to effectively monitor all criminal judicial processes. 4. Ratification of international human rights instruments 30. Several representatives stressed the importance of achieving the universal ratification of the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, aiming at the abolition of the death penalty. They called for its universal ratification, stating that increased ratification was important for advancing the universal abolition of the death penalty. 31. Some representatives encouraged the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) to continue to intensify its efforts towards universal ratification of the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, aiming at the abolition of the death penalty. 32. Representatives also called for the universal ratification of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. 5. Implementation of international human rights standards and safeguards 33. Several representatives emphasized that States that retained the death penalty must ensure compliance with international fair trial standards and the full protections set out in international human rights instruments, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the safeguards guaranteeing protection of the rights of those facing the death penalty (Economic and Social Council resolution 1984/50). In that regard, some representatives of States that retain the death penalty agreed that rights and safeguards should be respected. Many representatives expressed concern, however, about the fact that universal safeguards were not always implemented, in particular with regard to the following: the use of the mandatory death penalty; the secret application of the death penalty; the failure to prevent miscarriages of justice; executions following unsafe convictions and unfair trials; public executions and the use of unregulated substances in lethal injections; the use of the death penalty for crimes that are not “most serious crimes” under international human rights law, such as drugrelated offences; and the use of the death penalty against persons with disabilities and other groups at particular risk. Concerns were also raised about the use of capital charges by military commissions at Guantánamo Bay Naval Base, citing denial of due process rights, secrecy, inequality of arms and lack of independence. B. Death penalty as torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment 34. Several representatives referred to the death penalty as a form of torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment and spoke of an emerging customary norm identifying it as such. They referred to the evolution of State practice according to which the death penalty was increasingly viewed as a practice incompatible with the prohibition of torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment and welcomed the emerging consensus on the matter. Refuting suggestions that the death penalty was not a matter of culture, religion or sovereignty, they said that there could be no justification for its use or for the use of torture. 35. Some State representatives hoped that the Human Rights Committee and other treaty bodies would soon state that capital punishment was contrary to the prohibition of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, and that the Committee’s draft general comment No. 36 would take an unambiguously abolitionist stance in relation 10