مدى قطعية البروتوكول 6 للمعاهدة الأوروبية لحقوق الإنسان، في إلغاء عقوبة الإعدام

Abstract EN

Aware of the reluctance of several States to abolish the death penalty, the European legislator, in its abolitionist approch, will not proceed to a modification of Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights which tolerates this penalty, for fear of not reaching unanimity, but will opt for the form of the Protocol, which only binds the signatory States.

Except that even if the objective of the latter is to abolish the death penalty in peacetime, its wording does not seem restrictive in view of the terms used.

Also the right to denounce the Convention, and therefore the Protocol, will further reduce its already unclear biding aspect.

This on the one hand.

But on the other hand, the abolitionist tendency of the European Court of Human Rights and its audacity, its notion of evolving interpretation of texts, and its quest for the “effectiveness” of rights, brought it, when interpreting the protocol, to almost modify the meaning of the initial texts especially Article 2 of the Convention.