Committee:Human rights Campaign (HRC)

Topic: Death Penalty

Country: :The Republic of Chile
Delegate: Regina López Cervantes (3B)

In Chile, the death penalty was repealed in 2001 by Law No. 19,734, during the government of Ricardo Lagos
Escobar, which modified various laws and regulations (among them, the Penal Code, the State Security Law, and
the Code of Military Justice), replacing capital punishment with qualified life imprisonment. The Penal Code
establishes, in its article 32 bis rule 1, that the person convicted of this last sentence will not be able to opt for
conditional release until after 40 years of effective deprivation of liberty.

The case of Tomás Bravo shook the country in recent weeks. His disappearance, and today the possible guilt of
his uncle in his murder, has generated a wave of repudiation at the national level.
However, as has previously occurred in other crimes against children and adolescents, social rejection and the
demand for justice have gone one step further than usual, unleashing the social demand for the death penalty.

Chile has already assumed the international obligation not to reinstate the death penalty, and has done so in a
series of international treaties. It did so, for example, in an additional protocol to the American Human Rights
Convention, expressly committing itself not to reinstate the death penalty, and it also did so in an additional
protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, so we clearly have an obligation not to
reactivate it”, explained the lawyer Catalina fernandez from the University of Chile.

Given such a scenario, the discussion about reinstating the death penalty for serious crimes such as infanticide
could not be more than a symbolic debate, but one that, nevertheless, reveals the widespread discontent that
exists with the application of justice in the country, as well as as well as a lack of knowledge regarding human
rights, such as the right to life, and their respect in every person, regardless of their crime,given this feeling, it is
important to move forward in educating and explaining to society that the solution to the problem lies in other
types of mechanisms, such as improving the judicial system, the effective application of penalties or better
investigative tools for the police.

Likewise, Fernández said that before the resurrection of a debate of this type, the occasion should be used to
explain and clarify to society why Chile does not adhere to the death penalty. The lawyer explained that the
abolition of the death penalty is mainly based on three reasons: morality, understanding that no human being is
superior to take the life of another, also the error rate maintained by the judicial system, which could lead to
declare the death penalty to innocent people and, lastly, that said penalty has no real effectiveness in reducing
crime.In the end what people say is 'well, we have a justice system that doesn't work, we have these people who
commit crimes and then go free'. But the death penalty is not going to solve these problems, because indeed
countries that have the death penalty, such as some US states, do not have lower rates of these especially
violent crimes,”

From them one has to demand a clear message that the death penalty is prohibited, that it cannot be restored
and that is why it is super problematic that we have this type of statement. In society in general we must have
authorities and people of influence that they use their position to teach about these issues, and not to misinform
or resort to populist claims of a percentage of the population that wants an immediate and radical solution that
will not solve any problem,

For his part, lawyer Rodrigo Mallea, a member of the Human Rights Center of the Law School of the University of
Chile, pointed out about the role of the authorities in this type of discussion that it is necessary to clarify positions
in order to generate dialogues and , especially, measures that allow to contain the crimes in Chile but always
from the respect of the human rights.
“The first position or action should be to take a position, from where we position ourselves before the death
penalty, because there are some people who flirt with this idea of ​increasing the penalties to gain social support
or populist people who promote the increase in penalties to respond to these situations.

The current constituent candidate for district 9 representing the Broad Front added that given that debates such
as the search for the death penalty respond, in his opinion, to the distrust that exists towards the authorities and
their resolution of problems, it is necessary advance in the establishment of more effective and preventive
policies.