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Capital Punishment vs Human Rights

In: Social Issues

Submitted By kalab
Words 4873
Pages 20
Introduction
Human beings as a rational animal set laws, rules and regulations which can enable them to maintain the smooth running of their associations and/or states. Members of a given society, however, may violate the law because of political, religious and ideological interests while others can act against it to satisfy their material and emotional needs. In this case, the state has the responsibility and the legal authority to punish the criminal or groups of criminals based on the given law. The punishment of the criminals may vary from simple fines and imprisonment to sever torture and the deprivation of life.
Capital punishment or the death penalty has existed as part of the human justice system since ancient times. In these earlier periods people were sentenced to death as a punishment for crimes considered as first degree offenses by the state. These crimes were most of the time political as well as religious and the method of execution, in addition to different brutal ways, was mainly beheading. With additional types of crimes resulting in capital punishment and more sophisticated methods of execution, the death penalty has continued to be practiced in the 21st century. However, capital punishment, especially after the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, has became an issue of greater debate among states, human right organizations and other nongovernmental organizations. Since 1948, the number of countries employing death penalty is decreasing and currently nearly half of the states in our world have abandoned the death penalty for all kinds of crimes.
This paper will focus on presenting the diverging views regarding capital punishment mainly from a human right perspective. The study then tries to present facts, figures, and tries to look in brief the move towards its universal abolition.
As far as the methods and methodology employed

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