Ref: 15/2015

On Monday, 20 April 2015, the Palestinian Center for
Human Rights (PCHR) organized a workshop, in cooperation with Earth and Human
Center for Research and Studies (EHCRS), for a group of university students and
graduates on death penalty and extra-judicial executions in the Palestinian
Authority (PA). Twenty-two persons, including 16 females, attended the
workshop, during which the attendants discussed their opinions and perspectives
on death penalty and the need and ways to abolish it.

The workshop, which was facilitated by Mohammed Abu
Hashim, a legal and human rights researcher at PCHR, addressed a number of
topics, the most prominent of which were: the death penalty in international
and domestic laws, guarantees for the application of the death penalty under
international and domestic standards, controversy over the abolishment of death
penalty, and PCHR’s legal and objective justifications for rejecting the
application of the death penalty in Palestine. Moreover, the workshop tackled
the application of extra-judicial executions under the pretext of collaboration
with Israeli forces and how it negatively affects the security, safety and the
rule of law in the society.

This workshop was organized in the context of PCHR’s
efforts to abolish the death penalty and put an end to extra-judicial
executions. PCHR mainly targets youth, especially university students and particularly
law students, due to their important role of making change in the Palestinian
society.  PCHR also aims to raise
awareness of human rights and create a new generation of human rights
defenders.

It should be noted that this workshop was organized in
the context of a project implemented by PCHR in cooperation with the
Representative Office of the Federal Republic of Germany to the PA.