HRI joined human rights partners to emphasise our regret the exclusion of the abolition of the death penalty from the plan of work of the Crime Congress, as well as from the UNODC strategy for 2021-2025. UN and regional inter-governmental bodies, as well as many countries from all regions, have long-recognized the human rights violations inherently associated with the use of the death penalty; and international human rights law and standards have clearly set its abolition as goal.

Both UNODC and the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) have unambiguously condemned the use of the death penalty for drug-related offences, noting that its application does not meet the threshold of the “most serious crimes” under international human rights law and does not respect the spirit of the international drug-control conventions and has the potential to be an obstacle to effective cross-border and international cooperation against drug trafficking, and have urged governments to move towards abolition.