Sierra Leone Is The Latest Country To Abolish The Death Penalty

     We are continuing to see progress in the fight to end the death penalty. Of the 195 nations around the world, 108 have now abolished capital punishment, which takes more life without leaving the community any safer and instead presents the risk of executing innocent people, executing people with developmental disabilities, furthering bias based on race or (in more authoritarian countries) political ideology, exposing guilty people to pain that violates human rights, and costing places with "well-tailored" death penalties millions more dollars than life imprisonment does. 33 other countries have limited its use to military crimes or simply have not executed people in decades. That leaves just 54 countries that execute at least one person a year, with the most prolific being China, North Korea, Iran, and Egypt. Not exactly good company. 

     2021 has been one of the 14 most productive years in terms of global abolition since Venezuela became the first country to do so in 1863. This year, Kazakhstan, Malawi, and now Sierra Leone have announced they will no longer commit state-sanctioned murder. The latter two are especially notable because they paint a clear picture that Africa is turning away from the death penalty as well as turning a new leaf in a continent in which human rights abuses are often seen as the rule and not the exception.

     Actually, Africa leads the way in this issue. Since 2000, the Ivory Coast, Senegal, Rwanda, Burundi, Togo, Gabon, Madagascar, Congo, Benin, Guinea, Chad, Malawi, and Sierra Leone have abolished the death penalty. Djibouti, Mauritius, South Africa, the Seychelles, Guinea-Bissau, Namibia, Mozambique, São Tomé y Príncipe, and Cabo Verde did so earlier. Meanwhile, Burkina Faso keeps it only for military purposes, and Eritrea, Tanzania, Zambia, Kenya, the Central African Republic, Cameroon, Ghana, Liberia, Niger, Mali, Mauritania, eSwatini, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco have not carried out any executions in the past decade or (in some cases) decades. That leaves Lesotho, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Uganda, the DRC, Equatorial Guinea, Nigeria, The Gambia, Libya, Egypt, Sudan, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, and Comoros as the final 15. I'm calling on the nations that have stopped killing to ensure that nobody is ever killed again, and I am calling on the nations that are still killing to stop and embrace peace, justice, and human rights. 

     Thank you, Sierra Leone, for making the right decision!!!