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Lawmakers in Ghana voted to take away the demise penalty from the nation’s prison legal guidelines this week, hailing the transfer as a victory for the West African nation.
A majority of Ghana’s parliament voted Tuesday to go a invoice to amend the Felony Offenses Act, substituting the punishment — typically carried out by hanging or firing squad — for all times imprisonment in crimes akin to homicide and piracy.
“At the moment the parliament of Ghana has made the nation proud,” the deputy majority chief of parliament, Alexander Kwamina Afenyo-Markin, informed the state-owned Ghana Information Company after the invoice handed.
“The demise penalty isn’t any extra a punishment in our statutes books,” he added, noting that the choice put Ghana consistent with the “worldwide human rights place.”
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Some 170 nations have abolished or launched a moratorium on the demise penalty to this point, in response to the United Nations, but it surely stays authorized in over 50 nations, together with america, China, Saudi Arabia and North Korea. Ghana is the twenty ninth African nation to abolish the punishment, following within the footsteps of Chad, Burkina Faso, Equatorial Guinea and Zambia, amongst others.
The non-public members invoice was launched by lawmaker Francis-Xavier Kojo Sosu, who represents the Madina constituency, a suburb of the capital, Accra, within the nation’s south. He informed Reuters that the parliament’s choice was consistent with opinion polls within the nation.
“On demise row, prisoners awakened considering this may very well be their final day on earth. They had been just like the residing useless: psychologically, that they had ceased to be people,” he stated in a separate assertion.
“Abolishing the demise penalty reveals that we’re decided as a society to not be inhumane, uncivil, closed, retrogressive and darkish … and displays our frequent perception that the sanctity of life is inviolable,” he stated the assertion.
Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo, who has publicly expressed help for abolishing the demise penalty, might want to signal the regulation earlier than it formally comes into impact.
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Human rights group Amnesty Worldwide hailed the vote as a “landmark” choice.
“At the moment’s parliamentary vote is a significant step by Ghana in direction of the abolition of the demise penalty,” Samira Daoud, Amnesty’s West and Central Africa director, stated in a press release. “It’s also a victory for all those that have tirelessly campaigned to consign this merciless punishment to historical past and strengthen the safety of the precise to life.”
Nonetheless, Daoud famous that Ghana’s structure nonetheless permits for the demise penalty in instances of excessive treason, and known as for the structure to be revised as nicely.
The Dying Penalty Venture, a U.Okay.-based nonprofit, stated it had labored carefully with Ghanaian lawmakers and curiosity teams to ban the penalty for all peculiar crimes. It additionally labored on an identical marketing campaign in Sierra Leone in 2021.
“At the moment’s vote for abolition is historic and locations Ghana squarely inside the worldwide development,” Saul Lehrfreund, its co-executive director, stated.
As of Monday, Ghana had 172 males and 6 ladies on demise row, in response to its nationwide prisons service, amongst its complete jail inhabitants of simply over 15,000. Nonetheless, no executions have been carried out within the nation since 1993.
Final yr, Amnesty recorded 883 executions in 20 nations, a greater than 50 % enhance from the yr earlier than, it stated. The determine didn’t embrace China, the place greater than 1,000 executions are thought to have occurred. The group stated it had recorded at the very least 576 in Iran, adopted by Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and america, the place 18 executions occurred in 2022.
In america, the variety of executions, demise sentences and public help for capital punishment continued a decade-long decline final yr, in response to a 2022 report from the nonprofit Dying Penalty Data Middle, which tracks knowledge on capital punishment. Nonetheless, botched executions stay a priority, with 35 % of all executions improperly carried out by personnel, the report stated.
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