Together towards a new abolitionist year!

International symposium at the national assembly, conferences at the Pantheon and at Sorbonne University, portraits exhibition on the gates of the Paris City Hall, plays, concerts, schools and prisons interventions, conferences in Morocco, Indonesia and DRC, film-debates, sit-in in Rabat… No sooner had the demonstrations that we carried out together for the 40^th anniversary of the abolition of the death penalty in France, and for the World day against the death penalty on the 10^th of October around the globe, finished, than we were already preparing the next big event: the World Congress against the death penalty, that will take place in Berlin, from 16^th – 18^th of November, 2022. Save the date! The Congress in Berlin will be the first in the Covid era #8CongressECPM   We expect it to be the Congress of resurgence, so we can exchange with our fellow abolitionists about our common actions. It will be a modern and inclusive event, enriched with different figures and shaped to be accessible to a wide range of people. We all learned to live with the pandemic, adapting our ways to communicate, and we have managed to maintain high standards to keep speaking out on the reality of the death penalty through qualitative webinars and online conferences.   Nonetheless, the digitisation of our demonstrations must stop. The Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva, as well as other bodies (ACHPR, etc.) have almost closed their doors to the NGOs, while people are being condemned to death through video conference, in Iran and elsewhere. We need to rally again, to share a drink and exchange on our actions to prepare together the abolition of tomorrow. We need to remobilise the young activists into the abolitionist family.   Emmanuel Macron, the President of France, demonstrated his support to the abolitionist struggle and to ECPM in particular, during the ceremony in tribute to Robert Badinter, ECPM’s honorary President, at the Pantheon. We are proud to see that our fight and our involvement are being recognised as a major element of the international stakes of France and of all our international partners such as Germany, Norway or Switzerland. To carry out all these actions, we also need your donations! Make a donation To donate is to support the abolitionist movement and to be “the voices of the voiceless”, quoting the words of Alphonse de Lamartine, a major abolitionist writer, and to raise their voices in all the places, where it needs to be heard. Join ECPM!   On behalf of ECPM, sincerely yours,   Raphaël Chenuil-Hazan, Executive Director, and Aminata Niakate, President