Death penalty rises in Ghana
Even though Ghana has not recorded any incidence of execution by death penalty since 1993, the number of death sentences has increased from nine in 2014 to 18 in 2015.
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As of December 31 last year, there were 137 people, including three women, on the death row in Ghana, seven of whom are foreign nationals.
The Director of Amnesty International, Ghana, Mr Lawrence Amesu, who made these known in Accra last Wednesday, described the situation as worrying and called on the state to take appropriate steps to expunge the death sentence through a referendum.
Forum
He was speaking at a forum organised by the organisation to present the 2015 edition of its annual death penalty report. The forum was attended by people from all walks of life, including lawyers, representatives from the Ghana Prisons Service, diplomats and human right activists.
“We will like to encourage Ghana to move away from the minority group of countries in the world which continue to retain the barbaric death penalty and join the majority and progressive group of countries who have abolished and or are abolishing it,” he said.
Mr Amesu said there was the need to focus on strategies to reduce crime such as changing the country’s educational system to be more job-oriented and creating job opportunities to engage the youth “who are more prone to crime.”
He said there was no evidence to show that the death penalty was the remedy to heinous crimes.
Executions
According to the report by the human rights NGO, 1,634 people had been executed globally in 25 countries in 2015 through the death penalty.
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The number represents a 54 per cent increase over that of 2014 when 1,061 cases were recorded in 22 countries.
The report added that the 1,634 cases of executions by death did not include China where more than 1000 were likely to have been executed. In China, death penalty data is treated as a state secret.
It mentioned China, United States, Iran, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia as practising the death penalty on a wide scale with the last three countries accounting for 90 per cent of the 2015 figure.
Mr Amesu explained that those countries used methods such as beheading, hanging, lethal injections and shooting in carrying out the death sentences.
The report, he added, showed that “102 countries abolished the death sentence for all crimes, six for ordinary crimes, while 32 were abolitionists in practice, bringing the total number of abolitionists to 140 countries.”
Sub-Saharan Africa
The report, which was launched by the Board Chairman of Amnesty International, Mr George Aggrey, further indicated that sub-Saharan Africa recorded 43 judicial executions within the period in four countries including Chad, Somalia, South Sudan and The Sudan.
Mr Aggrey noted that more Francophone countries in the sub-region had taken bold steps in abolishing the act as compared to the Anglophone countries.
“During the year, Madagascar and Congo Republic abolished the death penalty, increasing the number of abolitionists in the region to 18,” he said.