Ghana’s legislature has voted to remove the death penalty in the country. This move will make Ghana the latest country to join a long list of African countries that have done so in recent years.
The country, at present, has 170 men and six women on death row, but those jail terms will now be replaced by life imprisonment.
The last execution in the country had taken place in 1993.
Prior to this ruling, execution has been the mandatory sentence for manslaughter in Ghana.
Opinion surveys have suggested that several Ghanaians approved of the scrapping.
In 2022, seven people had been sentenced to death in Ghana – but none of them have been executed.
Treason is a crime also punishable by death in Ghana.
The bill to revise the Criminal Offences Act was put forward by MP Francis-Xavier Sosu and he had had the support of the parliament’s Committee on Constitutional, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs.
The Death Penalty Project (DPP), a London-based campaign organization had worked with Mr Sosu to get the law changed.
DPP has stared that Ghana is the 29th African country to revoke the death penalty, and the 124th country globally.
In recent years a significant number of African states have scrapped the death penalty, including Benin, Central African Republic, Chad, Equatorial Guinea, Sierra Leone and Zambia respectively.
