00:00Something big happened in Lebanon this month you probably didn't hear about.
00:03The country became the first in the Middle East to completely abolish the death penalty.
00:08It is something big and exceptional even.
00:13Exceptional not only for Lebanon but the Arab world and worldwide.
00:17Non-violence activist Ogharid Yunan was the person who drafted and submitted the bill to Lebanese MPs.
00:23She and her late partner Waleed Slaibi campaigned in Lebanon for decades to change the country's mind about the death
00:30penalty.
00:30Talking to politicians, school kids, even to victims' families.
00:35I cannot accept to be a citizen in a state of gallows.
00:41I wish and I'm trying, I'm struggling since many years to have and to build a civilized state that rules
00:50by protecting life.
00:53Not by killing.
00:54When we go to the family's victim for condolences, because this is the humane behavior, they are against the crime.
01:08I told them, you are against the crime, I'm against the crime.
01:12So why to do a second crime?
01:15Why you are in favor for a second crime?
01:19Because you are against the crime, in principle.
01:22You are against the first one.
01:24So you have to be against the second also.
01:27And what the second crime the execution will give to you?
01:33Your rights?
01:34They will give to you a body.
01:37A dead body.
01:38So this is what, do you want?
01:41Many of the families listen carefully to that.
01:45The timing of the decision is also remarkable.
01:48Lebanon is in political and financial turmoil.
01:51The ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah is fragile.
01:54It also comes as other countries in the region, including Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Israel, have actually been expanding the
02:00death penalty.
02:01The countries where the most dramatic increases in the death penalty have happened are also Middle Eastern countries.
02:08So it's very, it's very important to see this.
02:12William Shabbos is a legal expert who's the main author of several reports on the death penalty prepared by the
02:17UN Secretary General.
02:19Around 120 countries have abolished the death penalty.
02:22Others have it as a legal option for serious crimes, such as war crimes.
02:27Several countries haven't used it for at least 10 years.
02:30But a group of countries have imposed or carried out the death penalty in recent years, including almost all the
02:36countries in the Middle East.
02:37Now, part of what makes Lebanon so interesting is it used to execute people by hanging or firing squad.
02:43But it hasn't executed anyone for more than 20 years since Ogharit Yunnan helped achieve a moratorium on capital punishment.
02:50In Lebanon, we succeeded through sensitization, through spreading the culture, through discussion with people,
03:00because they didn't have this experience to discuss about death penalty.
03:05Inside the schools, one small example, when we go to school since 2000,
03:11all the students, the children or the young, they said, we are, we are for the, for the death penalty.
03:19We are, because he, he, he deserved to be killed.
03:22He killed, so he deserved to be killed.
03:24At the end of two, two hours only, the session is two hour, two hours only.
03:31All the students said, I became against death penalty because now I know, I have arguments,
03:41I have something strong, scientific or political or social, even religious, even about the society.
03:49So it's about the culture.
03:51We didn't want from the beginning to change the law.
03:54We wanted to have, to spread this culture of, against the death penalty, against violence,
04:01against killing by law, and to, to spread it inside the society.
04:07Apparently, that's how it goes in a lot of countries that do eventually abolish the death penalty.
04:12It happens slowly, over decades.
04:14Government after government, over the years, won't carry out the death penalty and the public just get, get used to
04:23it.
04:23And you have generations who have grown up without the death penalty.
04:28It's just, they view it as a, one of those barbaric punishments of the past,
04:33like, like locking people in stocks and throwing things at them and hanging them from poles and, and drowning them.
04:41Many different political parties were in favor to abolish death penalty.
04:47A little surprise, but it was like this.
04:50The parliamentarian bloc of Hezbollah, they said that they are against the law to abolish death penalty,
04:59but they will not stop the process.
05:02Some politicians in Lebanon also pointed to Israel, which just expanded its death penalty.
05:07Israel's civilian courts only ever executed one person, Nazi official Adolf Eichmann, in 1962.
05:14But the country just passed legislation allowing special tribunals to impose the death penalty on Palestinians,
05:20found guilty of involvement in the October 7th attacks.
05:23It's intriguing that at the very time that Lebanon is taking the step towards abolishing the death penalty in law,
05:33the opposite seems to be happening in Israel.
05:36And Israel was one of those countries that we always put on the list of, of the de facto,
05:42of the state that had stopped using the death penalty.
05:45It was one of the arguments for some deputies in the parliament saying, and for others,
05:53saying that, look at Israel, it expands the death penalty, so we have to, we have to show that Lebanon
06:01is better.
06:02There were over 80 people still on death row in Lebanon.
06:06Parliament voted to convert their sentences into life in prison plus hard labor.
06:11Ogarit Yunnan isn't happy about that part of the law.
06:14She's also heard some criticism about the timing, that Lebanon has bigger concerns right now.
06:19Yeah, I heard some of this.
06:24Listen, we don't have priorities between human rights issues.
06:29Each time we can succeed for one issue, one human rights issue, we have to take it and to be
06:37happy.
06:37But I wish that it would happen in a better condition in Lebanon.
06:44So that the joy would be stronger because Lebanon is in a war with a death toll by thousands since
06:54last March.
06:55But we cannot, we cannot, we cannot, we cannot not to be happy to succeed a human rights issue.
07:04So what happens next? Will other countries follow Lebanon's example and get rid of the death penalty?
07:08I think Lebanon will be a model for the region, like a positive contagion, I think.
07:16I have this feeling.
07:18And especially for the countries that have a long time of moratorium, like Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria.
07:28Morocco with 30 years of moratorium.
07:34I don't expect that this is going to be the beginning of dominoes that are going to result in widespread
07:40progress at this point.
07:42But it is part of a global trend, that's for certain.
07:46What do you think? Will more countries follow Lebanon's example?
07:49Let us know in the comments.
07:51And if you liked this video, hit like and subscribe.
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