New Delhi, Nov. 17: India has voted against a crucial UN resolution seeking to end death penalty, an Amnesty International release issued here today said.

The resolution calls upon member states that still maintain the death penalty on their statute books “to establish a moratorium on executions with a view to abolishing death penalty”.

It urges states “to respect international standards that provide safeguards guaranteeing protection of rights of those facing death penalty” and “progressively restrict its use and reduce the number of offences for which it may be imposed.”

The resolution on a moratorium on the death penalty was adopted at the UN General Assembly’s Third Committee on Friday, it said.

Ninety-nine nations voted for the resolution, 52 voted against it and 33 abstained from voting. It will now be put up for endorsement before the plenary session of the assembly in December, the release said.

The General Assembly had in 1971 and 1977 adopted two resolutions stating it was “desirable” for states to abolish the death penalty. But the new resolution goes a step further, calling for a halt to the penalty.

Although the resolution is not legally binding on states, it carries considerable moral and political weight as it is backed by a majority of the members of the UN’s principal organ, the General Assembly.

The UN secretary-general will have to report about the implementation of the resolution to the assembly next year.

The cross-regional initiative for a moratorium on executions was led by 10 countries — Albania, Angola, Brazil, Croatia, Gabon, Mexico, New Zealand, the Philippines, Portugal (for the EU) and Timor Leste.

“The resolution — adopted by the UN’s highest political body with universal membership — is a clear recognition of the growing international trend towards worldwide abolition of death penalty, endorsed by the UN secretary-general,” said Amnesty International secretary-general Irene Khan.

“It is a crucial step forward in creating a death penalty-free world — as envisaged by the General Assembly three decades ago,” she said.

“Death penalty is the ultimate denial of human rights — the premeditated and cold-blooded killing of a human being by the state in the name of justice. It violates the right to life as proclaimed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and is the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment,” Amnesty says.

In recent years, Amnesty has been actively campaigning in India against execution.

Several eminent persons such as Justice Krishna Iyer, Justice Leila Seth, Justice Rajinder Sachar, Mohini Giri, Upendra Baxi, Shyam Benegal and Fali S. Nariman among others have backed the Amnesty campaign.

In an open letter written to the Prime Minister last month, they said: “Death penalty legitimises an irreversible act of violence by the state and will inevitably claim innocent victims, as has been persistently demonstrated. A step towards abolishing death penalty would go well with the principles of Gautam Buddha and Mahatma Gandhi, of which the whole country is proud.”

So far, 133 countries have abolished the death penalty in law or practice. Only 25 countries actually carried out executions in 2006. Ninety-one per cent of all known executions took place in China, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Sudan and the US.

Data collected by Amnesty show an overall decline in the number of executions in 2006, a recorded 1,591 executions compared to 2,148 in 2005.