Malawi will not abolish the death penalty from its laws, Attorney General Jane Ansah told United Nations Human Rights Council on Wednesday.

The government told legal advisor said it is not the wish of Malawians to outlaw death sentence as established during a consultative process.

Attorney General, Jane Ansah: Death penalty will still be in Malawi laws

“Malawi retains the death penalty and, as such, has no intentions to ratify the Optional Protocol to the [International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights] ICCPR,” Ansah said when she presented Malawi’s final position on Universal Periodic Review (UPR) recommendations on human rights during the council’s 16th Session in Geneva, Switzerland.

Ansah said when deciding to ratify international instruments, Malawi is guided by its constitutional requirements.

“Malawi will continue to listen to the voices of the people of Malawi regarding the issue of the death penalty,” she told the gathering.

Murder, treason and armed robbery are punishable by hanging in Malawi but the country has not carried out an execution since 1992, and is therefore believed to have a policy or established practice of de facto abolition.

In 2007 the High Court ruled that the automatic nature of the death penalty in Malawi for murder and other offences violated the right to life and amounted to inhuman punishment as it did not provide the individuals concerned with an opportunity to mitigate their death sentences.

The European Union (EU) has been calling for the universal abolition of death penalty, stressing that countries still conducting executions must abolish this “cruel and inhuman punishment.”

Britain, which is Malawi’s largest bilateral donor, also urged Malawi to abolish capital punishment.

The influential Roman Catholic Church,  other prominent Christian churches and rights groups have also  yearned  for the death penalty  to be abolished, generating a heated debate over the years.

Former president Bakili Muluzi, who ruled Malawi from 1994 to 2004 following the country’s first democratic elections, vowed that he would “never sign a death sentence against a fellow human being” during his rule.

Muluzi was credited for improving human rights after three decades of late Kamuzu Banda’s absolute dictatorship under which rights were seriously abused.

The incumbent Bingu wa Mutharika, a Church-going Catholic, who has been in power since 2004 has also not signed a death warrant.

http://www.nyasatimes.com/national/malawi-will-not-abolish-death-penalty.html

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