Ghana Parliament approves abolishing the death penalty

The Parliament of Ghana has voted this Tuesday to abolish the death penalty for common crimes, in a historic decision by which it has managed to join a list of African countries that in recent years have chosen to abolish the death penalty.

This bill will amend the Criminal Offenses Act, replacing the death penalty with life imprisonment. For the law to be enacted, the country's president, Nana Akufo-Addo, must ratify it, reports the newspaper Pulse.

Francis-Xavier Sosu MP, who introduced and championed the bill, has hailed the achievement, saying “this is a major step forward for Ghana's human rights record.”. “The abolition of the death penalty shows that we are determined as a society not to be inhumane, uncivil, closed, retrograde and dark,” he added.

Sosu has also revealed that according to opinion polls, the majority of Ghanaians are in favor of abolishing. In addition, it has indicated that a constitutional revision is being studied.

The London organization Death Penalty Project (DPP), which worked with Sosu to change the law, has called it a “huge success for Human Rights”: “By voting for the abolition, Ghana has consigned the death penalty to history”.

Despite the fact that no executions have been carried out in the country since 1993, according to data from the Ghana Prison Service, a total of 176 people – 170 men and six women – were on death row.. Ghana is the 29th country to abolish the death penalty in Africa and the 124th worldwide.

A historic vote

The NGO Amnesty International has celebrated “the historic vote to eliminate the death penalty from the laws”, which it considers to be “a great step forward”, since this punishment violates the right to life as it is the “maximum punishment cruel, inhuman and degrading that has no place in our world”.

“Today's parliamentary vote is a big step for Ghana towards abolishing the death penalty.. It is also a victory for all those who have campaigned tirelessly to consign this cruel punishment to history and strengthen the right to life,” said Samira Daoud, AI's Director for West and Central Africa.

Daoud has remarked that, “although it is a historic decision, the total abolition of this draconian punishment would not be complete without the revision of the Constitution, which establishes high treason as the death penalty.”