The Death Penalty in the OSCE Area–Background Paper 2019 rights law and is more effective and humane.”62 A further aspect to consider is the possible effect abolition would have on advancing improvements in criminal justice systems. The American Bar Association’s report The State of Criminal Justice 2019 about the United States found that in states that have abolished the death penalty, the controversial issue of the death penalty does not hinder different actors from co-operating with one another more effectively to reform a variety of criminal justice system issues.63 The death penalty is not only ineffective in deterring crime, but also in ensuring only those who are culpable beyond reasonable doubt are convicted. Wrongful convictions continue to occur and its irreversible nature precludes even guilty prisoners from rehabilitation. Likewise, the death penalty does not make societies safer or fairer.64 In the suggested list of issues relating to the death penalty that the Advocates for Human Rights submitted to the UN Human Rights Committee together with the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty in January 2019, they highlighted the ongoing concerns raised by the UN Human Rights Committee about the high number of people wrongly sentenced to death in the United States.65 The UN Human Rights Committee considers executing people whose guilt has not been established beyond reasonable doubt an arbitrary deprivation of life.66 If these aspects were better understood and publicized, public support for the death penalty would presumably decline.67 Moreover, the ineffectiveness of the death penalty is exacerbated by its discriminatory use.68 At the UN high-level panel in February 2019, experts discussed how all biases could be addressed in the application of the death penalty to ensure it is 62  Report of the Secretary-General, Moratorium on the use of the death penalty, U.N. Doc. A/73/260, 27 July 2018, para. 60. 63  Ronald J. Tabak, “Capital Punishment”, The State of Criminal Justice 2019, The American Bar Association, p. 244, <https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/publications/criminaljustice/2019/capital_punishment_2019.pdf>. 64  “Joint Statement of UN Independent Experts”, 7th World Congress against the death penalty, March 2019, <http://congres.ecpm.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/7thWC-joint-statement-UN-Special-Procedures-Mandate-Holders.pdf>. 65  The Advocates for Human Rights and The World Coalition Against the Death Penalty, “The United States’ Compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights Suggested List of Issues Relating to the Death Penalty”, January 2019, p. 5, <http://www.theadvocatesforhumanrights.org/uploads/usa_tahr_wcadp_iccpr_loi_final_3.pdf>. 66  General Comment No. 36, op. cit., note 10, para. 43. 67 Hood, op. cit., note 39. 68  See Chapter 3 - Discrimination in Moving Away from the Death Penalty: Argument, Trends and Perspectives, op. cit., note 9, pp. 100-184; and: Stephen B. Bright, “Discrimination, death and denial: the tolerance of racial discrimination in the infliction of the death penalty”, Santa Clara Law Review, Vol. 35, 1995, pp. 433-483, < https:// digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4454&context=fss_papers>. 20