A/HRC/10/44 page 9 however, the General Assembly adopted resolution 62/149 in which it envisaged that the Council could continue to work on this issue, and in which it called upon all States that maintained the death penalty to progressively restrict its use, to reduce the number of offences for which it may be imposed, and to establish a moratorium on executions with a view to abolishing the death penalty.4 In addition, the Assembly called upon States that had abolished the death penalty not to reintroduce it and requested the Secretary-General to submit a report on the use of capital punishment based upon information to be provided by all States. Resolution 62/149 was reaffirmed by the Assembly in December 2008 with a slightly stronger majority.5 In subsequent reports (A/63/293, paras. 14 and 69), the Secretary-General confirmed that there is a trend towards abolition. In addition, in November 2008, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights adopted a resolution calling on African States to observe a moratorium on the death penalty.6 33. Despite the above non-binding resolutions of the highest political body of the United Nations and the clear trend towards abolition under international treaty law and practice, this legal analysis must conclude that, for States that have not yet ratified the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights or the respective protocols to the European and American Conventions on Human Rights, the further use of the death penalty does not constitute a violation of the right to life. This conclusion does, however, not provide a legal response to the question raised above, namely whether capital punishment is to be considered cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment in the sense of article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights or article 16 of the Convention against Torture. 34. Traditionally, this question has been negated on the basis of a systematic and historical interpretation of the Covenant and comparable regional human rights treaties. The legal reasoning seems to be compelling: how can a certain practice be considered a violation of a specific provision of a treaty if it is explicitly permitted by another provision of the same treaty? Whereas this line of argument was certainly correct at the time when the human rights treaties were adopted, when the clear majority of States did not consider the death penalty cruel, inhuman or degrading, however, is it still compelling today? Would it not be more appropriate to interpret the meaning of “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment and punishment” in the light of the present-day understanding of these words by Governments around the world? Human rights are a rapidly developing concept and most international and regional treaty monitoring bodies apply a dynamic interpretation of human rights treaty law. B. Evolution of the prohibition of corporal punishment 35. The prohibition of cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment has been interpreted in a dynamic manner in relation to the question of corporal punishment. Corporal punishment may be 4 A total of 104 States voted in favour of the resolution, 54 against and 29 abstained. 5 A total of 105 States voted in favour of the resolution, 48 against and 31 abstained. 6 See final communiqué of the forty-fourth ordinary session of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, held in Abuja from 10 to 24 November 2008.