Another Country Bids Farewell to the Death Penalty

Ghana has joined the ever-growing list of nations – in Africa and worldwide – to abolish the death penalty, trading capital punishment for life imprisonment according to the population’s will.

“This is a great advancement of the human rights record of Ghana,” states Francis Xavier Sosu, the parliamentarian who tabled the bill. “We have conducted research, from the constitutional review to opinion polls, and they all show that the majority of Ghanaians want the death penalty removed.”

Even though there hasn’t been an execution in Ghana since 1993, 176 people were on death row as of 2022. The nation’s Criminal Offences Act will substitute life imprisonment for the death penalty, following in the footsteps of the Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Zambia which ended capital punishment in the last two years. According to the London-based NGO The Death Penalty Project, Ghana became the 29^th African country and the 124^th globally to end capital punishment.