INFLUENCE OF INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS ORGANIZATIONS ON PAKISTAN’S DEATH PENALTY POLICIES: BALANCING SOVEREIGNTY AND GLOBAL NORMS

Abstract

The death penalty is a controversial issue in Pakistan and can be considered as a vital issue for the country’s legislation, culture, and politics. While Pakistan has tried to conform to the laws of human rights in the international realm, the country continues to struggle in reproducing it fully. The legal structure in Pakistan for the death penalty has been firmly entrenched with the help of nationalistic, religious and political reasoning. However, organizations and Conventions of human rights of the world including International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) should ban or limit the implementation of death penalty particularly on juvenile and mentally challenged persons. The existing state of the death penalty in Pakistan has been studied by interviewing several legal authorities, human rights activists, and other insiders of the legal system. The implications are that there are legal, religious, and cultural concerns that favor and those that do not favor capital punishment as it holds in Pakistan. As this work has demonstrated, a number of improvements have been made in recent years. For example, the practice of executing juvenile offenders is no longer permitted. The conclusion stresses on the fact that Pakistan needs change that legal policy and attitudes regarding capital punishment in order to be in sync with the human rights.