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ID: HR19-617

Presenting author: Aurelie Placais

Presenting author biography:

Director of the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty, Aurelie Placais has been working for more than 10 years for worldwide abolition of the death penalty. She notably contributed to the promotion of World Day against the Death Penalty, which in 2015 focused on the death penalty for drugs.

Women facing the death penalty for drug related offenses

Aurelie Placais, Delphine Lourtau, Sharon Pia Hickey

In September 2018, Cornell Center of the Death Penalty Worldwide and the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty launched a ground-breaking report, Judged for More Than Her Crime: A Global Overview of Women Facing the Death Penalty. This study is the first to examine how and when women receive death sentences.

The report documents widespread discriminatory practices in the capital prosecution and detention of women on death row. It shines a light on the most pressing issues facing the long-neglected population of women under sentence of death: access to effective legal representation; judicial recognition of gender-specific circumstances, such as domestic violence and the implementation of minimum prison condition standards that respond to the specific needs of women prisoners.

After murder, drug-related offenses are the most common crimes that lead to death sentences for women—particularly in the Middle East and Asia. For example, the overwhelming majority of women on death row in Thailand were convicted of drug-related offenses. In Iran, drug trafficking is the crime for which women are most frequently sentenced to death, after murder. At least 43 women were hanged for drug crimes in Iran from 2001 to 2017. Gender dynamics and female disempowerment are salient factors associated with women’s involvement in drug smuggling. Female migrant workers are easy targets for drug trafficking rings because they are typically poor and uneducated, but hold passports. For example, Mary Jane Veloso, a Filipina mother of two boys and former domestic worker in Dubai, was sentenced to death by firing squad in Indonesia for drug smuggling, which carries a mandatory death sentence.

Representing the culmination of two years of research funded by Norway, our study, which received an overwhelmingly supportive reception, confirmed the need for a longer-term project involving research, advocacy, and training, particularly for women sentenced to death for drug-related offenses.