The Diplomat
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, closed the seminar “The death penalty in the Americas” on Monday at Casa de América, on experiences and the situation of capital punishment in the region.
Since 2003, the World Day against the Death Penalty has been celebrated on 10 October, and since 2007, the European Day against the Death Penalty has also been commemorated.
Coinciding with the commemoration, Casa de América hosted a seminar, organised by the International Commission against the Death Penalty, in collaboration with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation, with the participation of, among others, Martin O’Malley, member of the International Commission against the Death Penalty and former governor of Maryland, a state that abolished the death penalty in 2013, and Esteban Beltrán, director of Amnesty International Spain.
At the closing ceremony, Albares stressed that the eradication of the death penalty is one of the main priorities of Spanish foreign policy on human rights and recalled that our country is a founding member and the largest contributor to the International Commission against the Death Penalty, which has its headquarters in Madrid.
The Spanish government, like the European Union, considers universal abolition to be one of the cornerstones of its foreign policy, the moratorium as an intermediate stage on the road to abolition and respect for minimum international standards on the death penalty.
