Committee : General Assembly

Topic : Moratorium on the use of the death penalty

Country : Russia
Capital punishment in Russia has been indefinitely suspended, although it is
theoretically allowed, with the only legal method being shooting. There exists
both an implicit moratorium established by the President Yeltsin in 1996, and
an explicit one, established by the Constitutional Court of Russia in 1999 and
which was most recently reaffirmed in 2009. Russia has not executed anyone
since 1996, and the regulations of the Council of Europe prohibit it from
doing so at any time in the future. However, the death penalty still remains
codified.
Article 20 of the Russian Constitution states that everyone has the right to
life, and that "until its abolition, death penalty may only be passed for the
most serious crimes against human life." Additionally, all such sentences
require jury trial. The inclusion of the abolition wording has been interpreted
as a requirement that the death penalty be abolished at some point in the
future.
The current Penal Code permits death penalty for five crimes:

murder, with certain aggravating circumstances (article 105.2)

encroachment on the Life of a Person Administering Justice or Engaged

in a Preliminary Investigation (article 295)

encroachment on the Life of an Officer of a Law-enforcement Agency

(article 317)

encroachment on the Life of a Statesman or a Public Figure (article

277)

genocide (section 357).

No crime has a mandatory death sentence; each of the five sections

mentioned above also permit a sentence of life imprisonment as well as a
prison term of not less than eight or 12 (depending on crime) nor more than
twenty, years. Moreover, men under the age of 18 or above the age of 65 as

of the time crime was committed, and all women, are not eligible for a death
sentence.

Russia , in the UN general assembly has always voted in favour of

moratorium on the death penalty -UN General Assembly Resolutions 65/206
(21 december , 2010) , UN General Assembly Resolution 63/168 (18
December 2008) , UN General Assembly Resolution 62/149 (18 December
2007)
The question of the death penalty, or capital punishment, has long been a
matter of great concern. As an opponent of capital punishment, our nation
believes that the death penalty is a form of cruel and unusual punishment;
and it represents a violation, at the most basic level, of a persons human
rights. Our country echoes the findings of the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights, in that, no person should be subjected to torture or to
inhuman treatment or punishment. Furthermore, the government and
citizens of our country believe that capital punishment can be used to
indirectly target minorities, people of different ethnicity, the poor, peoples of
different religious affiliation, and geographic location, in the cause of fulfilling
an execution sentence. From this, we recognize Member states who have
established a moratorium the death penalty, and is deeply concerned with
those who still implore capital punishment as a criminal sentence. We see
the death penalty as a clear violation of the Universal Declaration of Human
Right, and calls for a moratorium on capital punishment on a global scale