AA / Peter Kum
The Central African National Assembly voted on Friday the law abolishing the death penalty.
The law will have to be promulgated in the coming days by the President of the Republic, Faustin Archange Touadéra. The country will then ratify the international treaty abolishing the death penalty.
“It is a law that meets our expectations. We’ve been pleading for it for a long time. We will have to make the Central African population aware of this new law”, declared in a telephone declaration to Anadolu, Bruno Gbiegba, coordinator of advocacy for the abolition of the death penalty in the Central African Republic and member of Redhac (Network for the defense of human rights in Central Africa).
In the Central African Republic, the last execution of a death sentence dates back to 1981. In January 1981, six people sentenced to death for murder were shot.
The Central African Republic joins the list of African countries that have abolished the death penalty in recent years on the continent, following Guinea in 2016, Chad in 2020, and Sierra Leone in 2021.
By the end of 2021, in more than two thirds of the countries in the world, the death penalty was abolished in law or in practice; 108 countries (the majority of states in the world) had abolished the death penalty in their legislation for all crimes and 144 were abolitionist in law or in practice.
At the end of 2021, the death penalty remained in force in 55 countries according to the NGO Amnesty International.
Amnesty International has recorded at least 2,052 death sentences in 56 countries, 39% more than in 2020, when it recorded at least 1,477 in 54 countries.
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