One by One, African Countries Dismantle Colonial-Era Death Penalty Laws

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

47% : But for years, the prospect of execution hung over them.
46% : Gambia had been on track to abolish the death penalty last year, when a new Constitution was drafted.
44% : Regionally, there's been a progressive move in Africa toward the abolition of the death penalty."
42% : "The death penalty is a colonial imposition, and these laws were inherited from the U.K.," said Sabrina Mahtani, the co-founder and former executive director of AdvocAid.
41% : As in previous years, China led the 2020 list of countries that execute the most people, killing thousands, according to Amnesty International, which compiles capital punishment statistics.
41% : The last time the death penalty was carried out in Sierra Leone was 1998, when at the apex of a devastating civil war, 24 soldiers were executed by firing squad for having participated in a coup the year before.
38% : Next in 2020 came Iran, which executed at least 246 people, and then Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and in sixth place the United States, with 17 executions.
38% : Still, Gambia's president has made some significant moves away from capital punishment, Mr. Popoola said.
37% : DAKAR, Senegal -- Lawmakers in Sierra Leone were expected to debate and possibly vote Friday on whether to abolish the death penalty, a momentous step that would make the West African country the 23rd on the continent to prohibit capital punishment.
37% : Expectations ahead of a vote on the issue heavily favored abolition, a long-sought goal of civil society organizations and legal practitioners who see the death penalty as a vestige of Africa's oppressive colonial history.
31% : "This is a horrible punishment and we need to get rid of it," said Oluwatosin Popoola, a legal adviser at the rights group Amnesty International, a leading critic of capital punishment.
31% : A vast majority of the 193 member states of the United Nations have either abolished the death penalty or do not practice it.
31% : While death sentences and executions have declined globally in recent years, they do not necessarily reflect the growing number of countries that have banned capital punishment.
16% : In May, at a review of Sierra Leone's human rights record at the United Nations, the government announced it would abolish capital punishment as well.

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