India Votes Against UN Death Penalty Moratorium, Says Sovereign States Decide Their Own Laws

India says a lawful death sentence, passed after due process and multi-tier safeguards, cannot be equated with an extrajudicial killing

PGurus Newsdesk

November 14, 2026

India Backs UN Text On Illegal Killings, Rejects Link To Capital Punishment

India says Article 6 of the ICCPR permits capital punishment, which it uses only in the rarest of rare cases

India voted against a United Nations General Assembly draft resolution calling for a moratorium on the death penalty, asserting that there is no international consensus against capital punishment and that every sovereign state has the right to decide its own legal system and penalties.

The vote on draft resolution A/C.3/81/L.43 took place at the Third Committee’s 43rd plenary meeting of the 81st UN General Assembly on Friday (local time). India’s position matches its votes in previous sessions, including in 2016, 2018 and 2024.

In the same session, India spoke on a separate draft, A/C.3/81/L.37, on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions. New Delhi backed the resolution overall, but formally disassociated itself from one paragraph, Operational Paragraph 6.

That paragraph refers to a report of the UN Special Rapporteur, which asserts that the death penalty inherently constitutes torture or ill-treatment, and calls on states to take its recommendations into account. Bhavika Mangalanandan, an Indian Foreign Service officer and First Secretary at India’s Permanent Mission to the UN, said India strongly disagreed.

Mangalanandan said India opposes extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, calling them unlawful and a clear violation of the right to life. But she objected to equating them with judicially mandated capital punishment. Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) permits the death penalty with restrictions, she said, and it is handed down after rigorous legal process. Calling it state-inflicted death is therefore a travesty, she added.

She also criticised discussing capital punishment under a text on extrajudicial executions, calling it disingenuous and mischievous, and said it was an attempt to present personal ideological preferences as settled international law.

On India’s own legal position, she said the death penalty is a statutory provision used only in the rarest of rare cases. The framework guarantees multi-tier procedural safeguards, including the presumption of innocence, mandatory confirmation of death sentences by a higher court and extensive consideration of mitigating factors.

The United States also voted no. Yaryna Ferencevych, the US Deputy Representative to the UN Economic and Social Council, said Washington had decided to disengage from most Third Committee resolutions and called the resolution’s language problematic. The US supported Singapore’s amendment on national sovereignty, she said, and holds that the decision on capital punishment belongs to the domestic democratic processes of sovereign states. She added that Article 6 of the ICCPR, to which the US is a party, confirms that states may use the punishment within established parameters, and that the US does not consider its lawful use inconsistent with human rights.

France, on the other side, welcomed the resolution’s adoption by a large majority, calling it an important step towards universal abolition of the death penalty.

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