Ghana's Parliament Votes to Abolish the Death Penalty The death sentence has been abolished by a vote in Ghana's parliament, making ...

Ghana's Parliament Votes to Abolish the Death Penalty

The death sentence has been abolished by a vote in Ghana's parliament, making Ghana the most recent African nation to attempt the change in recent years.

+- Although 176 persons received death sentences last year, according to the Ghana Prisons Service, there haven't been any executions in Ghana since 1993.

According to the report of the House committee, the new bill will change the constitutional provision of the law regarding the death sentence to life imprisonment.

However, the law had to be approved by President Nana Akufo-Addo before it became effective.

Francis-Xavier Sosu, a member of parliament who presented the measure, called it "a great step forward for the protection of human rights in Ghana."

"We have conducted research from the constitution to public opinion polls, and all of them show that the majority of Ghanaians want the death penalty to be abolished," Xavier Sosu told the news agency of Reuters.

According to The Death sentence Project, a non-governmental organization with headquarters in London, which worked with partners in Ghana to amend the law, Ghana is now the 29th country in Africa and the 124th in the world to have abolished the death sentence.

Among the most recent African nations to abolish the death penalty in the previous two years are Zambia, Equatorial Guinea, Sierra Leone, and the Central African Republic.