practice and also refers to the UN General Assembly Resolutions calling for a worldwide moratorium on executions of the death penalty. 56. The Complainants also submit that national and international judicial and quasijudicial forums have held that the death penalty constitutes cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. In Ng v. Canada,19 the UN Human Rights Committee held that the execution of a sentence of death may be considered to constitute cruel and inhuman treatment within the meaning of Article 7 of the Covenant. In Interights & Ors (on behalf of Bosch) v. Botswana,20 the Commission concluded by encouraging all state parties to take all measures to refrain from exercising the death penalty. The complainants also rely on the case of S v. Makwanyane among others to emphasize the point above on various points. 57. The Complainants aver that the victim’s execution by the unnecessarily painful method of hanging constituted a cruel, inhuman and degrading form of punishment. This averment is supported by the Complainants contention that the process of being blindfolded and pinioned, hanged by the neck, made to defecate and urinate and/or being subjected to a long drawn-out, extremely painful, and gruesome death amounts to inhuman and degrading treatment contrary to Article 5 of the African Charter. In further support of this averment, reference is made to UN Human Rights Committee21 recommendation that where the death penalty is applied by a State party for the most serious crimes, it must be carried out in such a way as to cause the least possible physical and mental suffering. That the Circumstances Surrounding the Republic of Botswana’s Implementation of the Death Penalty is Cruel and Inhuman Communication No. 469/1991 Communication No. 240/2001 21 General Comment 20 19 20 18 | P a g e