African Lawyers Seek Historic Ruling on Death Penalty
On October 10th, World Day Against the Death Penalty, the Pan African Lawyers Union (PALU) urged the African Court on Human and Peoples Rights to determine that the death penalty violates the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights as well as other human rights treaties. The request is the first of its kind and embodies the growing abolitionist movement across the Member States of the African Union.
The African Union is made up of 55 Member States, most of which are located in Sub-Saharan Africa. This region has abolished the death penalty at a greater rate than any other region over the past decade. In Sub-Saharan countries where the death penalty remains legal, executions are exceedingly rare. Only two African countries carried out executions in 2023.
The African Court now has the opportunity to recognize this inflection point and acknowledge that the death penalty has been rejected by the vast majority of the states under its jurisdiction. The Court also has the opportunity to identify the numerous ways that the death penalty directly contravenes its own foundational Charter. Article 4 of the African Charter reads: “Human beings are inviolable. Every human being shall be entitled to respect for his life and the integrity of his person. No one may be arbitrarily deprived of this right.” There is no way to reconcile the Charter’s language—that “[h]uman beings are inviolable,”—with state sanctioned capital punishment. A government that sentences an individual to death cannot possibly claim to respect that person’s life and integrity.
Article 4 also protects against the arbitrary deprivation of life, yet—as PALU argues in its submission to the African Court—the death penalty is fundamentally arbitrary. Capital punishment is imposed within systems that discriminate against individuals based on gender, age, mental disabilities, poverty, ethnicity, and political affiliation. Marginalized individuals encounter structural obstacles that increase their vulnerability to capital punishment. Illiteracy levels remain high throughout much of the continent, impeding defendants’ ability to understand the proceedings. Trials are frequently conducted in the languages they do not speak, and professional-level interpretation is rarely provided. Most people have no access to competent legal representation, and in countries such as South Sudan and Kenya, people have been sentenced to death with no legal representation whatsoever.
Women charged with capital crimes face additional obstacles to justice. Criminal legal systems throughout Africa fail to acknowledge the impact of gender-based violence (GBV) on women’s legal culpability and refuse to consider GBV as a mitigating circumstance.
Article 5 of the African Charter reads: “Every individual shall have the right to the respect of the dignity inherent in a human being and to the recognition of his legal status. All forms of exploitation and degradation of man particularly slavery, slave trade, torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment and treatment shall be prohibited.” The African Court has already concluded that execution by hanging is cruel and inhuman punishment. Moreover, it has found that lengthy confinement on death row, which causes immense psychological torment, violates Article 5.
African human rights advocates are leading the continent-wide effort to abolish the death penalty. We stand in solidarity with them today, and urge the Court to take this opportunity to confirm that the death penalty is fundamentally incompatible with international human rights law.