Observed annually on October 10, World Day Against the Death Penalty unifies and mobilises civil society, political leaders, lawyers, and public opinion in pursuit of universal abolition of the death penalty. 2022 also marks the centenary of one of the world’s earliest statutory abolitions in the Australian state of Queensland.

Abolition may now be widely embraced as a norm of international human rights law, but its establishment as a comprehensive and irrevocable fact remains elusive.