“Friends who leave take with them a part of our memories, a piece of ourselves.”
Edito : universal abolition as legacy
After years of service as a great leading figure, our President of Honor bowed out, leaving a huge feeling of emptiness in our hearts. Robert Badinter, not only implemented the abolition of death penalty in France, he dedicated oneself alongisde ECPM, to activism for worldwide abolition and making it the main human right amongst the five continents. Thanks to his dedication, ECPM became in almost 25 years, the international NGO of reference on the abolition of death penalty. To this day, ECPM led its action across French borders, by being involved in 25 countries across the world. Universal abolition will only occur by focusing on a strong advocacy towards opinion leaders and political actors of retentionist states. This advocacy is at the core of our actions both towards international institutions (UNO, CADHP) and future abolitionist states. The year 2023 saw our 4th Regional Congress occur, in Amman, Jordan, the opportunity to focus on the Middle-East, which remains an area of struggle with a lot of retentionist states. Thus, we face the challenge to lead our values and convictions in the most reluctent states towards abolition. We would not consider the latter without the dedication of our local partners who embody the main actors of our progress. It is with this guideline that ECPM stands on a single front for worldwide abolition, in the context of the Global Consortium for the death penalty abolition, in partnership with the World Coalition Against Death Penalty and many other partners. Finally, since our last World Congress in Berlin, we focus on youth and its strength in activism. This intention is embodied by the maintenance of our actions in schools and also in collaboration with the Council of Europe or the World Forum Normandy For Peace. We now officially announce that we will implement the next World Congress of 2026 in Paris, invited by the French President of Republic Emmanuel Macron. By then, our association will pursue its actions and staunch promotion of abolitionist values with the hard work of both the staff and administrative committee.
Raphaël Chenuil-Hazan
Executive director
Aminata Niakate
President
Key points of the report
Three original members of the association say farewell
With more than 20 years to their credits amongst ECPM’s associative committee, Véronique Mary, Emmanuel Maistre and Emmanuel Oudar will pass the torch during the upcoming general assembly on June 25th, 2024. They were respectively treasurer and board members of the association. This report is the opportunity to go through their memories at ECPM:
There are so much moving memories and anecdotes; it is hard to pick one! Before leaving my position as the treasurer of ECPM, after twenty one yers of service, I would particularly remember the general assembly of June 2022. While being blessed by the chance to gather again (staff, administrators and members) after two years of restrictions due to Covid, our partners were also present, as they got enrolled into a training cycle within our walls at the time. It embodies our associative “Togetherness” as a great symbol, where we shared activism and institutional life. Thus, we built upon time a strategy to develop and spread global abolition of death penalty.
To me, there are three milestones which illustrate these last twenty years amongst the associative committee of ECPM. To begin with, our first office, located in a 12sqm room which used to be a hairdresser place, where we implemented 2006 and 2007 Paris World Congresses. We were a team of six, very committed and operating squeezed between a fax machine and a printer. Then, four years later, when Zapatero, the Spanish Prime Minister back then, invited the abolitionnist community to gather in Madrid during the opening speech of the World Congress of Geneva, in the huge room of Human Rights at UNO. Finally, more than twenty years after the first World Congress, seeing young activists from the Abolition Now Tour from all over the globe taking the next step at the World Congress of Berlin in 2022. And we’ve come a full circle, or maybe another one is already happening, led by a new generation. The latter sharing one important value with the founders of ECPM: the importance to understand that the fight against death penalty was, is and will be built by sticking together.
The first administrative committe of ECPM, in which I took part in 2004, counted about fifteen members. It was made of people from very diverse social backgrounds, from age range, professionnal activities and income to political values. However, we gathered around one cause: the worldwide abolition of death penalty. This diversity embodies one of the main asset for the association to grow. Twenty years later, it is very satisfying for us to witness a positive evolution towards universal abolition.
Numbers to remember
Partners’ acknowledgements
ECPM is thankfull towards its political, financial and associative partners, which lead the abolitionist cause as far as possible in Central Africa, Middle East-North Africa and South-East Asia.