On December 15 the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights marked the 20th anniversary of an international death penalty treaty by calling for the universal abolition of capital punishment. Navi Pillay, the top UN human rights official, urged all states to adopt the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The protocol, which bars the death penalty, was introduced in 1989. “Abolishing the death penalty is a difficult process for many societies," she said. "[A]nd ratification of the Optional Protocol can often only come about after a period of national debate. Until they reach that point, I urge those States still employing the death penalty to place a formal moratorium on its use, with the aim of ultimately ratifying the Optional Protocol and abolishing the punishment altogether everywhere.” In her statement, she enumerated a number of issues with the death penalty, including "the fundamental nature of the right to life; the unacceptable risk of executing innocent people by mistake; the absence of proof that the death penalty serves as a deterrent; and what is, to my mind, the inappropriately vengeful character of the sentence." To date, 140 countries no longer carry out the death penalty, and 72 countries have ratified the Optional Protocol on ending the death penalty. Read the full statement below.
The OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe), the world's largest regional security organization comprised of 56 States including the U.S., recently published a 2009 Background Paper on The Death Penalty in the OSCE Area. It was prepared by the OSCE's Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), and updates the 2008 background paper of the same title. The 2009 paper highlights the changes in status of the death penalty in participating OSCE states. Of the 56 countries, only the U.S. and Belarus retain an active death penalty. The Russian Federation and Tajikistan retain the death penalty but are not carrying out executions. The full text of the paper can be found in English and Russian on ODIHR's 
The Death Penalty Project of London recently published 
The President of Kenya, Mwai Kibaki, announced on August 3 that he is commuting the death sentences of everyone on the country's death row to life imprisonment. The President cited the wait to face execution of the more than 4,000 death row inmates as "undue mental anguish and suffering." No one has been executed in Kenya for 22 years. The President said he was following the advice of a constitutional committee. Mr. Kibaki has directed government officials to study whether the death penalty has any impact on fighting crime and he appealed to Kenyans to engage in a national debate on the issue, suggesting the government may be preparing the ground for a repeal of the death penalty.