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Morocco: human rights official calls for vote to abolish death penalty

October 13, 2022 at 4:42 pm

Flag of Morocco, on 8 May 2019 [Kristin Harvey/Flickr]

A Moroccan human rights official has called on her fellow citizens to vote in favour of the recommendation made by the UN General Assembly Third Committee to abolish the death penalty, Anadolu has reported. Amina Bouayach made her comment in a press conference on the occasion of the twentieth annual World Day Against the Death Penalty on 10 October.

“We are waiting for voting in favour of the next recommendation of the United Nations General Assembly Third Committee related to abolishing the implementation of the death penalty,” said Amina Bouayach. “The Moroccan National Human Rights Council aspires by the end of next year that the vote will be in favour of the UN resolution as a step towards the final abolition of the death penalty. This will be thirty years since the moratorium for the implementation of the death penalty in the Kingdom of Morocco in 1993.”

Bouayach is the council’s head. On 6 May, it said that 74 people, including two women, are under sentence of death in the Kingdom. However, no death penalty has been implemented since 1993. Instead, those who are sentenced to death are detained in special sections in Moroccan prisons for life unless there is a pardon or a cut in the sentence.

Morocco abstained from the November 2017 vote on a draft resolution by the UN General Assembly Third Committee calling on member states to end the implementation of the death penalty. The committee is concerned with social, humanitarian and human rights issues affecting people worldwide.

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