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The Burkinabe national transitional parliament will, on Friday, start a series of discussions with human rights organisations and interested parties that have been campaigning for the abolition of the death penalty in Burkina Faso.

Burkina Faso’s laws currently provide for the use of the death penalty in the penal code, the military code of justice and article 4 of the railways police law. Human rights organizations have been campaigning against this law. A draft bill, which has already been approved by the government, has been sent back to the transitional parliament.  

The sessions will start tomorrow with the hearing of the human rights organisations followed by the Report hearing on 4 September. The bill will be put to the vote on 6 September.

“This is a critical moment for Burkina Faso to put itself on the right side of history by acknowledging the inviolable nature of the right to life,” said Alioune Tine, Amnesty International West Africa director.

Amnesty International opposes the death penalty in all cases without exception, regardless of the nature or circumstances of the crime, the guilt, innocence or other characteristics of the offender or the method used by the state to carry out the execution.

According to the organisation, death penalty violates the right to life as proclaimed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; it is the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment. Human rights activists argue that there is no convincing evidence to support the idea that the death penalty works as a deterrent to crime, or that it is more effective than other forms of punishment.

Alioune Tine said, “The eyes of the world will be on the country’s parliamentarians to see whether they will join the steady global movement away from the use of the death penalty and abolish this cruel punishment once and for all.”

The last known execution was carried out in Burkina Faso in 1988. If the law is adopted, Burkina Faso will join the 17 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa which have abolished the death penalty.

Over the course of the last twenty years, Côte d'Ivoire, Senegal and Togo in West Africa, alongside Burundi, Gabon, Mauritius and Rwanda, have all abolished the death penalty for all crimes. Earlier in the year Madagascar became the latest country in Africa to abolish the death penalty for all crimes.