Online (Zoom)

Join us for a discussion of death penalty practice and policy in Singapore from Professor Michael Hor, a leading academic on criminal law, criminal procedure and evidence.

Online (Zoom)

Professor William Schabas, a leading academic on international criminal and human rights law, joins us for a discussion of the role of international law in restricting and abolishing the death penalty, with a particular focus on the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).

In this instalment of our Conversation Series, Associate Professor Daniel Pascoe joins us for an examination of past and present death penalty politics in the South Pacific. This discussion will probe why Papua New Guinea and Tonga - the last retentionist states in the South Pacific - have strayed from the paths chartered by their geographical, cultural and historical neighbours.

Our inaugural conference, presented in partnership with Griffith University Centre for Social and Cultural Research, brought together academics and experts from around the world to discuss the politics of death penalty abolition from a number of perspectives—historical, legal and political, domestic and international. 

There are currently nearly 4,000 people on death row in Pakistan. In the third instalment of our Conversation Series, we discuss death penalty practice in Pakistan with Sarah Belal, Executive Director of Justice Project Pakistan.

Many take for granted the acceptability of consensual sexual activity between persons of the same sex, and the total inappropriateness of the state interfering with—let alone prohibiting—such behaviour. It may come as a surprise, then, that around the world, numerous states are complicit in the most extreme response to sexual diversity: homicide. 

In addition to those countries that impose the death penalty for same-sex intimacy, this report examines the far greater number of countries in which state actors commission, condone, endorse and enable the killing of sexual minorities. A global snapshot shows that sexual minorities have been subjected to extrajudicial executions and state-sponsored 'conversion therapies’ that lead to death or pose significant risk to life. Further, killings by private actors have been excused by discriminatory homicide laws, such as the notorious ‘gay panic’ defence which remained lawful in Australia until December 2020.

Join us for the launch of ‘State-Sanctioned Killing of Sexual Minorities: Looking Beyond the Death Penalty’, in partnership with Capital Punishment Justice Project.

Click here to watch this event.

In the second instalment of our Conversation Series, we hear from both speakers about various types of violence—direct, structural, and cultural—that occur in Sri Lankan prisons and beyond.

Ambika Satkunanathan speaks to us about the launch of a new report on Sri Lankan prisons published by the Human rights Commission of Sri Lanka. Despite a moratorium on executions which has been in place since 1976, judges have continued to sentence people to death. As of April 2018, over a thousand prisoners were on death row.

Catherine Heard shares her findings from her project ‘Understanding and reducing the use of imprisonment in ten countries’, which examines the realities of imprisonment across five continents (See ICPR’s latest report here.)

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Conversation Series: Dr Christopher Ward SC

Join us for the first instalment of the Conversation Series, delivered by Eleos Justice and Capital Punishment Justice Project.