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World Coalition Against the Death Penalty
Florence Bellivier, former President of the World Coalition, and Raphaël Chenuil-Hazan at a meeting for Serge Atlaoui in Paris in 2015.
Founded	13 May 2002; 21 years ago (2002-05-13)
Type	INGO
Headquarters	Montreuil, France
Location	Global
Services	Protecting human rights
Fields	Legal advocacy
President	Matthew James Goldberg
Director	Aurélie Plaçais
Website	worldcoalition.org

The World Coalition Against the Death Penalty is an international alliance of NGOs, bar associations, local governments and trade unions that aims to strengthen the international dimension of the fight against the death penalty.

Objective and funding

Founded in May 2002, the World Coalition is an association of more than 180 member organizations advocating for the abolition of capital punishment worldwide.

The World Coalition facilitates lobbying after international organizations and states and organizes events of international concern. It contributes to commemorating the World Day Against the Death Penalty every 10th of October. The World Coalition also encourages the creation of national or regional coalitions against the death penalty to strengthen initiatives taken in this regard.

The World Coalition is funded by its members’ contributions, the European Union, and some European governments, such as those of Belgium and Switzerland. Other institutional funders also provide financial resources for some specific projects.

Creation

On 22 June 2001, participants to the first World Congress Against the Death Penalty, an event held by French non-government organization (NGO) Ensemble contre la peine de mort,^[1] adopted the Strasbourg Declaration in the hemicycle of the Council of Europe. In paragraph 9, the signatories committed to “creat[ing] a world-wide co-ordination of abolitionist associations and campaigners, whose first goal will be to launch a world-wide day for the universal abolition of the death penalty”.

After several preparatory meetings in Paris and Brussels, organizations convened in Rome on 13 May 2002 to officially create the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty. A first Steering Committee composed of 11 members, in charge of defining the World Coalition’s political strategy, was elected then renewed at each General Assembly.

Since 2008, the World Coalition has been registered as an association under French law.

Campaigns

World Day Against the Death Penalty

The World Coalition has made 10th of October the World Day Against the Death Penalty. The first occurrence of this annual event was celebrated in 2003. In 2007, the Committee of Ministries of the Council of Europe declared that a European Day Against the Death Penalty also be held every 10th of October, coinciding with the World Day.^[2]

The World Day Against the Death Penalty aims to unite local initiatives in favor of abolition. Since 2005, every World Day has focused on a specific issue, which is selected and defined by the World Coalition:

2005: Africa towards abolition
2006: Miscarriages of justice
2007: The World decides (in order to support the resolution adopted on next 15 November by the United Nations General Assembly, calling on a moratorium on the death penalty)
2008: Focus on Asia
2009: Educate to abolition
2010: Death penalty and democracy
2011: Death penalty and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatments and punishments
2012: 10th anniversary of the World Day Against the Death Penalty
2013: High violent crime rates – Focus on the Caribbean
2014: Death penalty and mental illness
2015: Death penalty and drug trafficking
2016: Death penalty and terrorism
2017: Death penalty and poverty
2018: Death penalty and human dignity
2019: Death penalty and rights of the child
2020: Death penalty and legal counsel

International and regional protocols on the abolition

Since 2007, the World Coalition has been committed to a pluriannual campaign that encourages new states to ratify the Second Optional Protocol, an international treaty appended to the 1989 UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights that aims at the abolition of the death penalty.

The World Coalition also supports the accession to regional protocols aiming at the abolition of the death penalty. In this regard, the World Coalition has released a joint statement with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Protocol to the American Convention on Human Rights in 2020.^[3]^[4]

United Nations Moratorium on executions

Since 2007, the World Coalition has been encouraging United Nations member states to vote in favor of the resolution of the UN General Assembly on a moratorium on executions. The resolution was adopted for the first time in 2007^[5] and has been submitted to the vote of the General Assembly every other year since 2008.

Securing abolition of capital punishment

The World Coalition helps its members organize initiatives and advocacy missions to prevent abolitionist countries from restoring capital punishment in law or carrying out new executions.

Increasing knowledge on the death penalty

The World Coalition and its network have committed to gathering and sharing information on capital punishment. The World Coalition’s partnership with the Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide, that is associated with the Cornell University, has contributed to developing a database on the use of the death penalty around the world. The World Coalition also partners with institutes with a view to conducting survey, such as the one carried out by the GAMAAN Institute in September 2020.^[6]