PRI Human Rights Day Film Festival, Jordan
Penal Reform International (an international non-governmental organisation dedicated to the promotion of penal and criminal justice reform worldwide), in collaboration with Karama Human Rights Film Festival 2011, will present via its Middle East and North Africa office a panel session entitled Right to Life and the Arab Spring: Prospects for Abolition of the Death Penalty. This forms part of a series of film festivals in all its regions to tie in with International Human Rights Day.
The session provides a platform for informed debate among policy-makers, civil society and the public towards the progressive abolition of the death penalty, through the screening of documentaries.
The session screens a number of short documentaries on the impact of the death penalty on society, and its impact on people on death row and the family of convicted offenders, and families of victims of murder, the prison conditions of death row inmates and testimonies of prison guards who implement the executions.
The screenings will be followed by a panel of International and regional speakers from Algeria, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Tunisia, Jordan and Yemen, who will discuss the debate surrounding death penalty abolition and the importance of the protection of the right to life as a fundamental right.
The debates will highlight the international human right standards calling for death penalty abolition, with special focus on the different arguments for and against the death penalty, the social impact of death penalty, the economic impact of death penalties and, most importantly, the political use of the death penalty as a tool of oppression.
The debate also tackles the Arab revolutions and their impact on the death penalty, and the importance of the rule of law as a main safeguard for the right to life.
Participants include parliamentarians, law, policy makers, prosecutors, judges, National Human Rights Institutions, journalists, media, law societies, religious groups, NGOs and law students.