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The Advocates for Human Rights is thrilled with the latest report from the UN Special Rapporteur on executions, in which he concludes that "the death penalty is always incompatible with the prohibition of torture" and that abolition of the death penalty is "the only reliable means of ensuring compliance with" international human rights law.

Earlier this year, when the Special Rapporteur put out a call for help with his research on the topic, The Advocates rallied its partners and allies in the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty, submitting four reports with over 10 partners.

And last week we took the floor of the Human Rights Council to welcome the report and highlight three key issues: women on death row often live in near-total isolation; police and prosecutors use the threat of the death penalty as psychological torture to coerce confessions; and while our understanding that the death penalty is torture has emerged out of careful research, countries like Saudi Arabia have stepped up executions. Many thanks to our colleague Duaa Dhainy from the European Saudi Organisation for Human Rights for delivering the statement!

We're also grateful for the Special Rapporteur's work consulting with and interviewing people like our colleagues at Witness to Innocence who have lived experience with the death penalty. In his closing remarks, he comments about these meetings with survivors 1:41:15: "I should confess here that I have interviewed many victims of torture--survivors of torture--for many years as a forensic doctor, and this the world over. . . . I might say that I have a good deal of experience in this matter.

However, I was sincerely surprised at what I discovered. When I heard the testimonies of these individuals, when I spoke about this with them, when I spoke with survivors of the death penalty and their family members. I hadn't foreseen that. I had not foreseen that this punishment, which international human rights law does allow. . . . I hadn't expected that it would cause this type of suffering and damage, psychological and physical alike, for those that are sentenced to death. But when I heard their testimonies, and as I said these are voices that we normally don't hear, that are silenced. Even in the human rights community, we don't tend to have the right to hear as I was able to hear, these testimonies when I was preparing this report. . . . 'On death row, I was in hell. No matter how many years we have been out, all your pain and suffer lingers on and on forever.' These are testimonies from people that were determined to be innocent. But that's not the central issue culpability or innocence. Torture is not justified under any circumstance or situation. The prohibition is universal and absolute. . . . Now things evolve, ladies and gentlemen, and I believe that it is high time to put an end to this barbaric punishment that is the death penalty. In my opinion, it should be placed in the same corner as torture and slavery." (Read our joint report with Witness to Innocence to the Special Rapporteur)