The Ghanaian parliament has passed a bill to end capital punishment, also known as the death penalty.
The last execution happened 30 years ago in 1993. The country currently has 170 prisoners sentenced to the death penalty, which will now change to life imprisonment.
Last year, seven people were on death row in Ghana, but none were executed.
A Member of Parliament, Francis-Xavier Sosu, who initially put the legislation in place, said the votes showed they were “determined, as a society not to be inhumane, uncivil, closed, retrogressive and dark.”
MP Sosu worked with the parliament’s Committee on Constitutional, Legal, and Parliamentary Affairs to amend the Criminal Offences Act. He also had support from the advocacy group, the Death Penalty Project (DPP), a London-based non-profit organization that protects prisoners facing death and establishes humane judicial systems.
“Abolishing the death penalty shows that we are determined as a society not to be inhumane, uncivil, closed, retrogressive, and dark,” Sosu said.
For him, scrapping the death penalty would pave the way for a free and transformed society adding that "our common belief is that the sanctity of life is inviolable.”
According to the DPP’s statement, Ghana is the 29th African country to abolish the death penalty and the 124th. Many African countries, including Benin, Central African Republic, Chad, Equatorial Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Zambia have abolished the death sentence in recent years.
The bill will now go to the president to sign into law.
