b) Good Government Amnesty would want an annual report to include assessment of the effectiveness of good government policies. We would want to see actual improvements in the competence, accountability and human rights performance of aid recipient countries. An annual public assessment of recipient countries could have negative outcome (eg Kenya).
c) Optional Protocol (to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights) provides for the right of individual petition under the Covenant to the Human Rights Committee. Amnesty have campaigned for HMG to ratify. But we do not believe that would enhance protection within the UK Public in the UK have access to the European Court which has power to hand down legally bindingTM
decisions.
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d) Death Penalty i) (Second Optional Protocol to abolish the death penalty) Amnesty want HMG to ratify the Protocol. We voted for the adoption of this Protocol at the UN General Assembly in 1989. But cannot take on an international commitment on abolition
when decisions on abolition on re-introduction in the UK are made entirely by free vote in Parliament.
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ii) (Hong Kong)
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Amnesty have been following closely the development of the Bill of Rights for Hong Kong and with an eye on 1997 have been pushing for the abolition of the death
penalty. Every death sentence in Hong Kong has since 1966 been commuted. Formal abolition in Hong Kong would not prevent the post 1997 Government from re-introducing it.
iii) (Bermuda) Amnesty mistakenly believed
that the Orders in Council that recently abolished the death penalty in the other Caribbean Dependent Territories extended also to Bermuda. The Secretary of State has written to them to correct
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this. We cannot abolish by Order in Council in Bermuda but we hope that the House of Assembly will abolish capital punishment for Bermuda soon.
HRPABE
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