Ghana to end death penalty for all crimes except treason

July 26 (UPI) -- Ghana's parliament voted Tuesday to abolish the death penalty for all crimes besides acts of high treason, and will likely commute the sentences of 176 people on death row to life in prison.

Samira Daoud, the director for west and central Africa for the human rights group Amnesty International, called the vote a "landmark decision" and added that the total abolition of the death penalty would mean revising the country's constitution, which still allows the punishment for high treason.

Capital punishment will be abolished for all other crimes including murder, genocide, piracy and smuggling when the legislation goes into effect.

With the vote, Ghana became the 29th country in Africa and the 124th globally to remove the use of capital punishment, according to The Guardian.

Prisoners in Ghana have received death sentences from the courts even though the country has not executed anyone since 1993.

President Nana Akufo-Addo still needs to sign the bill into law but he has expressed support for the legislation, the Washington Post reported.

The bill was the work of Ghanian lawmaker Francis-Xavier Kojo Sosu, who told The Guardian that the death penalty "does not bring a sense of justice or closure to the families of crime victims."

Sosu, who worked closely on the bill with the nongovernmental organization The Death Penalty Project, added that death row inmates are usually people from "deprived backgrounds" who have experienced trauma.

"Amnesty International is also calling on the Ghanaian authorities to take steps to remove the death penalty from the constitution," the human rights organization said.

"Amnesty International opposes the death penalty in all cases without exception because it 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."