To Every Corner of the World

The Death Penalty Information Center recently posted a link to a collection of articles published last November by the Inter Press Service (IPS). The collection is titled "Crime and Justice: Abolishing the Death Penalty," and contains articles about work against the death penalty in Europe and Central Asia, Africa, the Mideast and the Mediterranean, Asia and the Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean, and the United States.

Among the many articles is an interview with Bill Pelke about The Journey of Hope and about his opposition to the death penalty as the family member of a murder victim, and an article titled "Executions Create Generations of Victims," which includes excerpts from MVFHR's report Creating More Victims: How Executions Hurt the Families Left Behind.

In the introduction, Mario Lubetkin, Director-General of IPS, writes:

It was a historic year. In 2007 the tide of opinion against the death penalty gathered in strength as never before, sweeping to every corner of the world. The number of abolitionist countries rose. The number of executions declined. Long in place moratoriums held and new ones came into force. And as the year drew to a close, proof of this seemingly irresistible tide of change came with the powerful vote in the U.N. for a global moratorium on executions. The IPS 'Death Penalty Abolition Project', supported by the European Union, has recorded the voices of many of those who have played a key role in this fast-moving journey towards a death-penalty-free world. In doing so, IPS has been guided by the purposes and principles contained in the Charter of the United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.