The drafting history of the Second Optional Protocol (1989) to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, aiming at the abolition of the death penalty, is explained by the Special Rapporteur of the UN Sub-Commission on Human Rights entrusted with an analysis of the proposal to elaborate such a protocol. Special attention is given to the adoption of the text successively by the Sub-Commission and the Commission on Human Rights, the Economic and Social Council, the Third Committee, and the General Assembly. Explanations are given on the possible reservation allowing an exception for ‘a most serious crime of a military nature committed during wartime’. The Second Optional Protocol is also compared with regional instruments on the abolition of the death penalty, such as the 6th (1983) and 13th (2002) Protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights and the American Protocol aiming at the same abolition (1990).
