International human rights organisation Amnesty International has described as a major step forward the passage of the amendment to the Criminal and Other Offences Act, 1960, by Ghana’s Parliament.
The third reading of the Amendment Bill , sponsored by Madina Member of Parliament (MP) Francis-Xavier Sosu, was done on Tuesday, July 25.
Commenting on the action by Ghana’s Parliament, Amnesty International’s West and Central Africa Director Samira Daoud said the passage of the bill “is a major step by Ghana towards the abolition of the death penalty”.
“It is also a victory for all those who have tirelessly campaigned to consign this cruel punishment to history and strengthen the protection of the right to life.”
President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo is expected to assent to the bill in order to make it a law.
Though in Ghana’s statutes, the death penalty has not been signed by any President in the Fourth Republic.
Samira Daoud pointed out that “the total abolition of this draconian punishment would not be complete without revising the Constitution, which still provides for high treason to be punishable by death”.
“Now that the 2022 Criminal Offences (Amendment) Bill and 2022 Armed Forces (Amendment) Bill have been passed by Parliament, President Nana Akufo-Addo should, without delay, sign them into law, commute all death sentences to prison terms, and establish an official moratorium on executions.”
The international human rights organisation also called on authorities “to take steps to remove the death penalty from the Constitution”.
It said it opposes the death penalty in all cases without exception “because it violates the right to life as proclaimed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights”.
“The death penalty is the ultimate cruel, inhuman, and degrading punishment which has no place in our world.”