AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL CALLS FOR THE ERADICATION OF DEATH SENTENCE IN THEIR 2017 REPORT LAUNCH.

Amnesty international, a nonpolitical human right organization has launched its 2017 Global death penalty report which highlights the plight of people put to death by governments and seeks ways to abolish death penalty in the world.

The report which covers the judicial use of death penalty from January to December 2017 has information collected from variety of sources including Official figures, judgement, information of individuals sentenced on death and their families and representatives, reports by the civil society organizations and media run reports.

According to research conducted by Amnesty international, at the end of 2017, 106 countries had abolished the death penalty in the law for all crimes and 142 countries had abolished the death penalty in law practice.

In the report, it was noted that the number of countries known to have imposed new death sentence reduced from 55 in 2016 to 53 in 2017 decreasing for the second year running.

The report has it that, in sub- Saharan Africa, Amnesty International recorded a drop in the number of executing countries from 5 in 2016 to 2 in 2017 which is in Somalia and south Sudan resulting to a drastic decrease in number of death sentence imposed and that was from 108 in 2016 to 878 in 2017 and that's about 81 percent decrease.

Speaking at the launch, the director of Amnesty international  Mr. Robert Akoto Amoafo revealed that many death row prisoners are unable to appeal against their convictions and most death row prisoners said they do not fully understand their right to appeal or appeal process and believed that they need to pay high fees for a private lawyer to appeal.

Mr. Akoto added that, at the end of 2017 160 people remain under death sentence but he believes punishment should be minted out to them rather than sentencing them to death.

"We continue to say that , Let's take death penalty out of our books" Mr. Akoto stressed.
We take cognizance of our neighboring countries like Burkina Faso,Gambia,Senegal,Benin and Kenya that have successfully abolishing the death penalty and encourage Ghana to do same"Mr. Akoto urged.