The Trinidad and To­ba­go Coali­tion Against the Death Penal­ty has is­sued a call for se­ri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion of manda­to­ry death sen­tences as a first step to­wards abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Fur­ther, the coali­tion said there is a need to move the death penal­ty de­bate be­yond its use as a crime pre­ven­tion mea­sure and in­stead to ex­plore ef­fec­tive pre­ven­ta­tive pro­gram­ming and im­prove the pub­lic se­cu­ri­ty of T&T while pro­mot­ing a restora­tive ap­proach to the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice.

The state­ment comes on the com­mem­o­ra­tion of the tenth an­niver­sary of the World Day Against the Death Penal­ty to­day. The World Day was in­au­gu­rat­ed by the World Coali­tion Against the Death Penal­ty, an al­liance of more than 130 NGOs, bar as­so­ci­a­tions, lo­cal au­thor­i­ties and unions from around the world to bring abo­li­tion­ists to­geth­er to strength­en the in­ter­na­tion­al di­men­sion of the fight against the death penal­ty.

As re­gards T&T, the coali­tion al­so be­lieves that it is time to move the pub­lic se­cu­ri­ty de­bate be­yond the death penal­ty and calls on the Gov­ern­ment and the leg­is­la­ture to be­gin en­gag­ing in mean­ing­ful di­a­logue with civ­il so­ci­ety-in­clud­ing non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions, com­mu­ni­ty-based or­gan­i­sa­tions, faith-based or­gan­i­sa­tions, acad­e­mia, ac­tivists and the le­gal pro­fes­sion-to ex­plore new and ef­fec­tive so­lu­tions to im­prov­ing pub­lic se­cu­ri­ty and valu­ing a restora­tive ap­proach to the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice.

The lo­cal coali­tion says T&T is no ex­cep­tion and notes there has been re­cent leg­isla­tive at­tempts to fa­cil­i­tate a re­turn to hang­ing. Af­ter an un­der­tak­ing by the Bar­ba­di­an gov­ern­ment to abol­ish their manda­to­ry death sen­tenc­ing, it points out that T&T is now the on­ly coun­try in the re­gion which im­pos­es a manda­to­ry death sen­tence for mur­der.

This is pro­hib­it­ed un­der in­ter­na­tion­al hu­man rights law and re­moves the judges' abil­i­ty to con­sid­er all fac­tors in a case, in­clud­ing mit­i­gat­ing cir­cum­stances or the in­di­vid­ual cir­cum­stances of the crime it­self. This year's theme of the world day fo­cus­es on the progress which has been made against the death penal­ty in­ter­na­tion­al­ly in its first decade.

The coali­tion points out that the end of 2003, 80 coun­tries had abol­ished the death penal­ty. To­day, that fig­ure stands at 97. Oth­er coun­tries which have joined this list are abo­li­tion­ist for or­di­nary crimes, or have es­tab­lished a for­mal mora­to­ri­um on ex­e­cu­tions.