The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk,  asked all nations to work harder towards abolishing the death penalty, an ongoing practice in 79 countries.

He was speaking at the Geneva-based Human Rights Council which held its biennial high-level panel discussion on the question of the death penalty.

The theme of this year’s panel was “Human rights violations relating to the use of the death penalty, in particular with respect to limiting the death penalty to the most serious crimes.