Transnational Networks and Norm Compliance: Stopping Executions in Belarus
Transnational Networks and Norm Compliance: Stopping Executions in Belarus Volha Charnysh Introduction A real momentum to end the death penalty is gathering around the world. More than two-thirds of states have abolished it in law or practice, only 21 states carried out executions in 2010 (Amnesty International [AI], 2011). Europe, where the death penalty is a pressing human rights issue, has been the leader of the abolition movement. Its most notable success is in the post-Soviet region. By 2008, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan abolished the death penalty; Tajikistan, Russia, and Kazakhstan imposed moratoria on executions. The region is death penalty-free with the exception of one state – Belarus. As many as 400 people have been executed in Belarus since 1991 (AI, 2009b), with the latest execution in March 2012. Belarus stipulated the provisional character of the punishment in the 1994 Constitution, enjoys a moderate crime rate, is ethnically homogeneous and stable, and was promised Council of Europe (CoE) membership and rapprochement with the European Union (EU) for abolishing the death penalty. Yet years of efforts by domestic and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs), human rights defenders, and the EU, the CoE, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and the United Nations (UN) have not convinced Minsk to stop executions. This chapter attempts to explain why the abolition effort failed. Understanding the Belarusian case is important because the norm compliance literature over- emphasizes successes, creating a bias in favour of norms that work and states that comply (Kowert and Legro, 1996, 485).
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