Death penalty and human rights
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948 has incorporated most of the human rights. It has specially enshrined the protection of the right to life in Article 3. However, Article 29 recognises that human rights and fundamental freedoms are subject to limits. Though it didn't specify clearly, it is presumed that by imposing death penalty, right to life may be curtailed in certain circumstances. The death penalty is the only exception that is mentioned in Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights of 1976.
All rights of man stem from one right, his right to life. Man's right is the first cause of all other rights. It is not axiomatic (self-evident) but it's absolute. The right to life, thus rooted in natural and ethical principles and usually inscribed in a country's constitutional and legal framework. In Criminology the word punishment is used to denote compensation and the offenders have to suffer different punishments depending on the aggravating form of offences. Though right to life is ensured and protected by the way of giving punishment to the wrongdoers, the right to life is curtailed when someone's life is executed under death penalty.

Origin of death penalty
Death penalty as a form of punishment has been used throughout history by different societies. The first death penalty laws came as far as the Eighteen Century BC's in the Code of King Hammaurabi of Babylon, which codified the death penalty for 25 different crimes. The death penalty was also part of the Fourteen Century BC's Hittite Code, the Seventh Century BC's Draconian Code of Athens, which made death penalty for all crimes, and the Fifth Century BC's Roman Law of the Twelve Tablets. Death sentences were carried out by such means as crucifixion, beating to death, burning alive and impalement.
During the 10th Century AD, hanging became the usual method of execution in Britain .In the following century; William the Conqueror allowed hanging in times of war. This trend would not last, for in the Sixteenth Century, under the reign of Henry VIII, as many as 72,000 people are estimated to have been executed. Executions were held for such capital offences as marrying a Jew, not confessing to a crime, and treason. By the 1700s, 222 crimes were punishable by death in Britain, including stealing, cutting down a tree, and robbing a rabbit warren. Because of the severity of the punishment of death, many juries wouldn't convict defendants if the offence was not serious. This led to reforms of Britain's death penalty. From 1823 to 1837, the death penalty was eliminated for over 100 of the 222 crimes punishable by death.
Britain influenced America's use of the death penalty more than any other country did. The first recorded execution in the new colonies was that of Captain George Kendall in the Jamestown colony of Virginia in 1608. Kendall was executed for being a spy for Spain. In 1612,Virginia Governor Sir Thomas Dale enacted the Divine, Moral and Martial Laws, which provided the death penalty for even minor offences such as stealing grapes, killing chickens, and trading with Indians.

Social argument
It is thinks that death penalty prevents future murderers and the society has always used punishment to discourage future criminals from wrongdoing. As the society has the highest interest in preventing murder, it should impose the strongest punishment to deter murderers. If murderers are executed, potential murderers will rethink for own life before killing. Even though statistical demonstrations are not conclusive, and perhaps cannot be, capital punishment is likely to deter more than other punishments because people fear death more than anything else does.
Some society requires the death penalty for the taking of a life. The balance of justice is disturbed on killing. Unless taking murderer's life to restores that balance, society succumbs to a rule of violence. Retributionists rooted in religious values, historically maintain that it is proper to take an 'eye for eye' and a 'life for a life'. Although the victim and the victim's family cannot be restored to the prior status, at least an execution brings closure to the murderer's (and closure to the ordeal for the victim's family) and ensures that the murderer will create no more victims.

A necessary evil
Though for centuries, the argument for retaining or abolishing death penalty continues, the abolitionist movement has grown over the life of the human rights movement. Those who didn't support the death penalty found support in the writings of European theorists Montesquiu, Voltaire and Bentham, and English Quakers John Bellers, John Howard and Cesare Beccaria. In the essay, Beccaria theorised that there was no justification for the State's taking of a life. The abolitionists fuelled by him believe that the death penalty is not a proven deterrent to future murders. The conclusion from years of deterrence studies is, at best, no more of a deterrent than a sentence of life in prison. Criminologist like William Bowers of North-eastern University, maintain that the death penalty has the opposite effect: that is, society is brutalised by the use of the death penalty, and this increases the likelihood of more murder. The U.S., with death penalty, has a higher murder rate than the countries of Europe or Canada, which do not use the death penalty.
The risk of executing the innocent precludes the use of the death penalty. The death penalty alone imposes an irrevocable sentence. Once an inmate is executed, nothing can be done to make amends if a mistake has been done. Many of the innocent releases from death row came about as a result of factors outside of the justice system. In other cases, DNA testing has exonerated death row inmates. Here, too, the justice system had concluded that these defendants were guilty and deserving of the death penalty. So it can be said that society takes many risks in which innocent lives are lost.

Concluding remarks
Though we are very far from achieving a worldwide ban on capital punishment, there are certain situations in which the death penalty should be looked upon as a violation of universally accepted international norms. Where the death sentence is imposed on minors, pregnant woman or persons with psychiatric disorder, at odds with internationally recognised norms, it constitutes a human rights violation. Even where a death sentence is carried out in circumstances that are not compatible with internationally accepted procedural norms constitutes a human rights violation. Again, the conditions of detention and the time spent awaiting execution; the death penalty may constitute a violation of human rights.

Mohammad Towhidul Islam is a human rights researcher.