PRI attended the OSCE Human Dimension Implementation meeting in Warsaw, Poland on 26 and 27 September 2007 to encourage support for the draft resolution on a global moratorium on the death penalty which is due to be presented to the UN General Assembly in October. Gulnara Kaliakbarova, PRI’s Regional Director for Central Asia, gave an oral presentation to the plenary on behalf of Amnesty International, PRI, the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty and the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights. PRI, together with the aforementioned NGOs, also held a side meeting at the event. Participants were addressed by Joachim José Martinez, a former prisoner who spent four years on death row in Florida, USA after being wrongly convicted of murder. Speakers also included Zulfia Abdulla of Amnesty International and PRI's Gulnara Kaliakbarova.

The World Coalition against the Death Penalty has launched a petition to support an appeal for a worldwide moratorium on executions. Penal Reform International, as an active member of the Coalition, urges supporters of abolition, other organisations and the media to sign the petition and circulate it as widely as possible.

Following the five million people who signed the ‘Moratorium 2000’ petition launched by the Community of Sant’Egidio and Amnesty International, the petition invites all governments to work for a world free of executions and calls upon the member states of the UN General Assembly to overwhelmingly vote in favour of an international moratorium on executions.

The petition and further information including leaflets and other materials are available at:
http://www.worldcoalition.org/petitions/?petition=3

August 2007

PRI has released a statement in conjunction with Avocats Sans Frontières, the Danish Institute for Human Rights, and RCN Justice & Democracy to express their support for Rwanda’s decision to abolish the death penalty. The statement reads as follows:

‘Human rights and justice institutions and all individuals respectful of human dignity, welcome the abolition of the death penalty in Rwanda. In taking this step Rwanda joins an increasing number of abolitionist countries, thus reinforcing the global abolitionist movement.

By this strong and symbolic gesture, Rwanda has entered into an era where human rights principles and their fields of application are widened and human dignity affirmed.

August 2007

By their very nature, prisons are closed institutions; sealed off from the public gaze. As such, they provide the perfect environment for torture, ill treatment and other human rights violations to take place without being detected or challenged. Independent public monitoring of prison facilities, therefore, presents a vital tool in ensuring that conditions of detention and the treatment of prisoners are compliant with international human rights standards. PRI’s support of public monitoring in Kazakhstan proves that transparency and accountability can be achieved even in the most closed institutions.