Sierra Leone will no longer apply the death penalty. About fifteen African countries still apply it, while others have not executed detainees for many years.
The last execution of a detainee in Sierra Leone dates back to October 1998. Yet the death penalty was not abolished until last week. Treason, murder, aggravated theft… There were many reasons for applying the death penalty in this country, even though the Special Court for Sierra Leone had ended up abolishing it for war crimes. Last Friday, President Julius Maada Bio, who connects modernist reforms and who in particular, recently, announced that he wanted enact a law on gender equality, ended the death penalty.
At the end of July, the Sierra Leonean parliament had already discussed the abolition of the death penalty and voted in favor. The promulgation by Julius Maada Bio is however a symbolic act: "By abolishing the death penalty, we are today affirming our faith in the sanctity of life," indicates the president. We as a nation exorcise the horrors of a cruel past ”. The death penalty for crimes formerly concerned will be replaced by imprisonment for more than thirty years, or even life imprisonment.
15 African countries still in favor of the death penalty
In 1998, several soldiers who had tried to instigate a coup a year earlier had taken death row. The Sierra Leonean decision "strengthens respect for human dignity in the country and reflects the growing trend in Africa and the world to relegate the death penalty to history books," said the European Commission representative for business. Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Nabila Massrali.
Among the countries which no longer apply the death penalty but which have not abolished it, there are fifteen African states: Tunisia, Algeria, Cameroon, Eritrea, Eswatini, Ghana, Kenya , Liberia, Mali, Morocco, Mauritania, Niger, Tanzania, Zambia and the Central African Republic. Liberia was the last to execute a detainee, in 2000. The country had acceded to the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, with a view to abolishing the death penalty, before backing down by 2008.
Cape Verde, first African country to abolish capital punishment
Before Sierra Leone, in 2021, Malawi also decided to abolish the death penalty. Last year, Chad took the leap, after abolishing the death penalty for the first time in 2014 before reintroducing it into its texts. A good twenty African countries have also decided to end the death penalty. It was Cape Verde which, in 1981, paved the way for the continent.
As for the fifteen countries still applying the death penalty, we find regulars of hangings and firing squads, such as Egypt, which executed six defendants last June. Sudan, Botswana and Somalia have also put detainees to death this year. The Gambia, for its part, is currently discussing a possible abolition of the death penalty, since 2018, as well as the establishment of a moratorium on this subject. In 2019, 22 death sentences were commuted to life imprisonment.