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Sierra Leon Joins the “No-Death Penalty” League

The West African country of Sierra Leon has joined the league of “No-Death Penalty” countries.  This occurred when the country’s Parliament voted to abolish the death penalty.

Sierra Leone’s journey to becoming a no-death penalty country started in February 2021.  That month, sierra Leonean President Julius Maada Bio officially gave the directives for the death penalty to be abolished from its laws.  In May 2021, following the President’s directive, and in response to the calls of the international community in Geneva during Sierra Leone’s United Nations Universal Periodic Review, the Deputy Justice Minister announced the commitment of President Julius Maada Bio’s cabinet to fully abolish the death penalty.  Finally, on 23 July 2021, the Parliament voted in favor of a Bill abolishing the death penalty and sent the Bill to President Bio for assent before it becomes law.

Amnesty International’s latest report on the global use of the death penalty shows that recorded death sentences increased in Sierra Leone in 2020 compared with 2019 from 21 to 39. However, seven death sentences were commuted by the President while 94 people were still under the sentence of death at the end of 2020.  But no executions were carried out in 2020.  As of 30 June 2021, 22 African countries have abolished the death penalty for all crimes.

Reacting to the news that Parliament voted on 23 July to abolish the death penalty in Sierra Leone, Amnesty International’s West and Central Africa Director Samira Daoud said that “Parliament’s vote in favor of abolishing the death penalty in Sierra Leone is a major victory for all those who tirelessly campaigned to consign this cruel punishment to history and a strengthening of the protection of the right to life.”  Samira Daoud called on the Sierra Leonean President to sign the new Bill into law without delay and commute all death sentences.  She also called on Sierra Leone to “immediately accede to the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, aiming at the abolition of the death penalty.”

Indeed, Amnesty International is opposed to the death penalty in all circumstances.  The Group believes that the death penalty “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.”

This article was from a press release distributed by APO Group.  You can start earning money by becoming our Independent Reporter or Contributor. Contact us at IR@downtownafrica.com

 

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