Committee : General Assembly

Topic : Moratorium on the use of the death penalty

Country : Russia

Capital punishment in Russia has been indefinitely suspended, although it is theoretically allowed, with the only legal method being shooting. There exists both an implicit moratorium established by the President Yeltsin in 1996, and an explicit one, established by the Constitutional Court of Russia in 1999 and which was most recently reaffirmed in 2009. Russia has not executed anyone since 1996, and the regulations of the Council of Europe prohibit it from doing so at any time in the future. However, the death penalty still remains codified.

Article 20 of the Russian Constitution states that everyone has the right to life, and that "until its abolition, death penalty may only be passed for the most serious crimes against human life." Additionally, all such sentences require jury trial. The inclusion of the abolition wording has been interpreted as a requirement that the death penalty be abolished at some point in the future.

The current Penal Code permits death penalty for five crimes:

murder, with certain aggravating circumstances (article 105.2) encroachment on the Life of a Person Administering Justice or Engaged in a Preliminary

Investigation (article 295) encroachment on the Life of an Officer of a Law-enforcement Agency (article 317) encroachment on the Life of a Statesman or a Public Figure (article 277) genocide (section 357).

No crime has a mandatory death sentence; each of the five sections mentioned above also permit a sentence of life imprisonment as well as a prison term of not less than eight or 12 (depending on crime) nor more than twenty, years. Moreover, men under the age of 18 or above the age of 65 as of the time crime was committed, and all women, are not eligible for a death sentence.

Russia , in the UN general assembly has always voted in favour of moratorium on the death penalty -UN General Assembly Resolutions 65/206 (21 december , 2010) , UN General Assembly Resolution 63/168 (18 December 2008) , UN General Assembly Resolution 62/149 (18 December 2007)

The question of the death penalty, or capital punishment, has long been a matter of great concern. As an opponent of capital punishment, our nation believes that the death penalty is a form of cruel and unusual punishment; and it represents a violation, at the most basic level, of a person’s human rights. Our country echoes the findings of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in that, no person should be subjected to torture or to inhuman treatment or punishment. Furthermore, the government and citizens of our country believe that capital punishment can be used to indirectly target minorities, people of different ethnicity, the poor, peoples of different religious affiliation, and geographic location, in the cause of fulfilling an execution sentence. From this, we recognize Member states who have established a moratorium the death penalty, and is deeply concerned with those who still implore capital punishment as a criminal sentence. We see the death penalty as a clear violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Right, and calls for a moratorium on capital punishment on a global scale