In celebration of the World and European Day against the Death Penalty, Italy reaffirms its firmest and unconditional opposition to capital punishment. This is a cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment that negates human dignity and has no added value in terms of security and crime deterrence, while it renders every miscarriage of justice fatally irreversible.
As stated by Minister Tajani, “One of Italy’s foreign policy priorities is the commitment to abolish the death penalty. As a country, we are leading the way towards a universal moratorium on executions, the first step towards a worldwide abolition of the death penalty”. “We stand alongside all those, from civil society to human rights activists, who fight every day for the definitive abolition of this practice,” Tajani reiterated.
In recent years, thanks to its strong action at the United Nations and on the bilateral level, together with international partners, Italy has succeeded in progressively decreasing the number of countries in which executions take place, at the same time favouring a growing commitment to the Resolution on the universal moratorium on executions, promoted by Italy itself in 2007 at the United Nations.
In 2024, Italy is thus strongly committed as a co-facilitator, together with Argentina, in the negotiation for the adoption of the tenth Resolution for a universal moratorium on the death penalty, whose discussion in the UN General Assembly is scheduled to take place this autumn in New York. Italy also participates in events and initiatives with the aim of sharing and furthering good practices tested in different areas of the world, together with partners from the European Union, the International Commission against the Death Penalty and civil society.
