On the World Day against the Death Penalty, 26 civil society organisations, on Monday, called for the ratification of the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights as well as the Additional Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, on the abolition of death penalty.

In a joint statement, The NGOs called for ending recent legislation applying the death penalty to new crimes as well as the reviewing the Penal Code and the Code of Military Justice.

This year’s theme of the 19th World Day Against the Death Penalty is “Women and the Death Penalty, an Invisible Reality”.

6% of women prosecuted are sentenced to death in Tunisia, said the organisations that signed the joint statement.

The signatories denounced the legal, economic and social segregation against women which often leads to unjust and unfair trials and verdicts, including death sentences.

“The prejudices caused by this segregation do not take into account the mitigating conditions of the arrest and the trial of women who are often victims of violence and sexual assault. Female prisoners, sentenced to death, are often subjected to painful physical and psychological detention conditions,” they affirmed.

Official figures show nearly 800 women sentenced to death around the world, including a hundred between 2008 and 2018, the associations claimed

Among the 26 signatories are the Tunisian League for Human Rights, the Tunisian Association of Democratic Women, the Organization Against Torture in Tunisia, the Tunisian Coalition Against the Death Penalty and the National Observatory for the Defence of the Civil Character of the State.

Source: Tap News Agency