The Socialist International is committed to assuming all necessary political initiatives in order to take on again and to relaunch, within the United Nations, the European Union resolution which provides for a moratorium of the death penalty, with a view to its total abolition.

The Socialist International asserts, in the face of terrible conflicts and horrible suffering of civil populations, the importance of the realisation of a new international law of human rights based on a new equilibrium between the principle of national sovereignty and the principle of the protection of fundamental human rights.

In this context, the Socialist International highlights the importance of a necessary reform of the UN and its instruments, by the insertion in chapter 7 of the Charter of the United Nations of an explicit reference to the principle of international intervention, with its procedures and spheres of application, in case of manifest massive violations of human rights.

We thus consider this proposal as the first and meaningful step towards the definition of rules and decision-making powers able to guarantee coherence, universality and full legitimacy to the principle of humanitarian intervention.

In that context we support the constitution of the International Penal Court.

Socialist International delegation address Sharia court sentencing in Nigeria, 16-20 October 2002