Geneva Office Report « The Struggle Against The Death Penalty: Achievements and Setbacks» Report on the FES-Side Event at the 60 th Session of the UN-Commission on Human Rights Geneva, Switzerland, 15 April 2004 Executive Summary “The fight against the death penalty is universal one like human rights are universal.” Claudia Roth, MP, German Commissioner for Human Rights Policy On April 15, FES-Geneva organized a panel discussion to the 60 th session of the UN­Commission on Human Rights on“The struggle against the death penalty” with the participation of representative experts. There was general agreement among the panellists that already a lot had been achieved in the fight against the death penalty but that still further action has to be taken. It became clear that the road to an abolition of the death penalty was not a one-way track to success, but that setbacks and reactionary developments to this regard, i.e. the reintroduction of the capital punishment, were a permanent danger. Both Eric Sottas, OMCT director, and Claudia Roth, German Commissioner for Human Rights, warned that such evolutions went into the false direction and specifically criticized countries like the Chad and Cuba, inter alia, for reintroduction and execution. The event’s key speaker, Ms Roth, asked for a strengthening of the state and democracy since strong states and strong democracies did not need the death penalty. Ahmet Altan, a Turkish novelist and political journalist, argued that the state by nature was savage, guided by people who still bear the feeling to kill and for revenge inside. In order to domesticate the imperfect human being and to civilize its socio-political entity, the state, supranational organisations had to be strengthened. Both agreed on the importance of the European Union and its activities in the fight against the death penalty. They were seconded by Elizabetta Zamparutti from Hands Off Cain(Italy) who asked for more international intervention by democracies and more involvement of international organisations. In her view it had been decisive for the fight against the death penalty that human rights had come to the centre of international law. This way it was not possible any more for states to declare the death penalty a domestic issue. Like other panellists she called for an immediate moratorium. In her statement that the capital punishment was devaluating the idea of human rights, Jotaka L. Eaddy from the US National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty summarized the guiding persuasion of the anti­death-penalty activists. 1