Head of the EU Delegation to BiH/EU Special Representative Ambassador Peter Sorensen said:

“The European Union stands firmly against the death penalty. The abolition of the death penalty worldwide is one of the main objectives of the EU’s human rights policy. We use and will continue to use all our available tools of diplomacy and cooperation assistance to work towards the abolition of the death penalty, and we support fully the efforts by civil society organisations around the world in the abolition of the death penalty. No execution has taken place in our Member States in the past 17 years.

“As underlined in the Progress Report 2014, we urge the relevant authorities in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and particularly the Republika Srpska authorities, to take appropriate action to initiate a new debate about the provision in the Constitution of the RS which allows for the death penalty. This provision means that BiH is in breach of Protocols 6 and 13 to the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (European Convention on Human Rights), to which BiH is a Party. Recognising that Bosnia and Herzegovina – and Republika Srpska in particular – have not applied the death penalty since its abolition in 1997, and taking into account that the penal code of the Republika Srpska does not foresee its use, we continue to underline the urgent need to restart the procedures to modify the Republika Srpska Constitution as soon as possible.

“We count on the constructive and focused engagement of all sides in such an effort.”

Notes to editors

There is a worldwide trend towards abolition of the death penalty. By 2013, 140 countries – more than 2/3 of the countries of the world – were abolitionist in law or practice. However, there is a worrying trend on countries still applying the capital punishment or others newly emerging in the retentionist practice, sometimes breaching decades of moratoria on executions. Of the 58 retentionist countries, in 2013, 21 countries/territories were known to have carried out executions and many have imposed death sentences.