opinion By Oluwatosin Popoola
On April 11, Amnesty International published its report on the global use of the death penalty for last year.
The report indicates that at least some 1,032 people were executed in 23 countries.
Excluding China,
which executed more people than the rest of the world combined, some 87
per cent of all the executions took place in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq,
and Pakistan.
In recent years,
sub-Saharan Africa has stood out as a beacon of hope and positive
progress on the campaign for the abolition of the death penalty.
However, last year
saw a mix of some good and bad news. The good news is that there has
been a significant reduction in the number of executions carried out in
the entire region.
The number of
recorded executions went down by 49 per cent, with 22 executions
recorded last year compared to 43 the previous year.
In addition, two
countries in the region abolished the death penalty. In January last
year, the Constitutional Court of the West African nation of Benin ruled
that in order to comply with the country's international human rights
obligations, all laws providing for the death penalty were void and
death sentences could no longer be imposed.
The landmark
decision effectively abolished the death penalty. Later in the year,
Guinea introduced a new Criminal Code, which removed the death penalty
from the statute books as an applicable punishment for ordinary crimes.
While Guinea's
Military Code still provides for the death penalty for some exceptional
crimes, a Bill to remove all the death penalty provisions from the
Military Code is pending in that country's National Assembly.
These positive
developments in Benin and Guinea followed the trend from 2015, when
Madagascar and the Republic of Congo consigned the death penalty to
history.
The pace of abolition of the penalty in sub-Saharan Africa has been steady and promising.
In 1977, when
Amnesty International started campaigning and advocating for the
worldwide abolition of the death penalty no country in sub-Saharan
Africa had abolished the death penalty for all crimes.
Today, some 19 have done so.
There was also good
news for hundreds of people who had been condemned to death and were
reprieved last year when their death sentences were commuted in Kenya,
Nigeria, Ghana, Mauritania, and Sudan.
The commutations in
Kenya were particularly remarkable. President Uhuru Kenyatta commuted
the death sentences of 2,747 prisoners - the entire death row population
in Kenya at the time.
Indeed, despite not
having removed the death penalty, it is instructive to note that Kenya
has not carried out executions in 30 years and this move further steers
it away from the death penalty.
On the other hand,
two countries that had not carried out executions since 2013 resumed.
Botswana executed one person last year; and in December three people
were suddenly executed in Edo State of Nigeria.
A very worrying
trend in sub-Saharan Africa last year was the sharp increase in the
number of death sentences handed down despite the fact that the number
of countries where death sentences were imposed by the courts fell from
21 in 2015 to 17 last year.
There was a staggering 145 per cent increase in the number of death sentences imposed across the region.
Some 1,086 death
sentences were confirmed last year compared to 443 in 2015. This sharp
increase was largely due to a massive surge in Nigeria, where the courts
imposed a total of 527 death sentences, the highest in the whole of
Africa.
This high number of
death sentences in Nigeria raises serious concern about the real
possibility of executing some innocent people, as unsafe convictions are
common.
In fact, it is worth noting that the courts exonerated 32 wrongly convicted people last year alone.
Mr Popoola is Amnesty International's advocate/adviser on the death penalty.
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