PhD studies in human rights: Togo Abolishes the Death Penalty

Sunday 28 June 2009

Togo Abolishes the Death Penalty

Togo has become the fifteenth African country to abolish the death penalty de jure: http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/good-news/togo-fifteenth-country-in-africa-to-abolish-the-death-penalty-20090623
Legislation was enacted to this effect by the country's parliament last week. Togo has not actually imposed the death penalty for three decades and has long been considered a de facto abolitionist state. This confirms evidence of two important trends: the general trend towards abolition in the world; and the very pronounced trend of states that abolish the death penalty in practice to subsequently confirm this by positive legal measures.
Here is the list of fifteen, with the year in parentheses indicating the adoption of relevant legislation: Mozambique (1990), Namibia (1990), Sao Tome and Principe (1990), Angola (1992), Guinea-Bissau (1993), Seychelles (1993), Djibouti (1995), Mauritius (1995), South Africa (1997), Côte d’Ivoire (2000), Senegal (2004), Liberia (2005), Rwanda (2007), Burundi (2008) and Togo (2009).
The following belong on the list of de facto abolitionist States, with the date in parentheses indicating the last known execution: Algeria (1993), Benin (1987), Burkina Faso (1988), Cameroon, Cape Verde, Central African Republic (1981), Republic of Congo (1982), Comoros, Côte d’Ivoire, Djibouti, Eritrea, Gabon, The Gambia (1981), Ghana, Kenya (1987), Lesotho, Madagascar (1958), Malawi (1992), Maldives (1952), Mali (1980), Mauritania (1987), Morocco (1993), Niger (1976), Senegal (1967), Swaziland, Tanzania, Tunisia (1991) and Zambia.
Taken together, this is an impressive list of forty-three States. There are, I think, fifty-four States on the continent. Note that the first de jure abolition in Africa dates only to 1990, less than two decades ago.

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William A. Schabas is professor of international law at Middlesex University in London. He is also professor of international criminal law and human rights at Leiden University, emeritus professor human rights law at the Irish Centre for Human Rights of the National University of Ireland Galway, and an honorary professor at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, in Beijing and Wuhan University. He is the author of more than 20 books and 300 journal articles, on such subjects as the abolition of capital punishment, genocide and the international criminal tribunals. Professor Schabas was a member of the Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission. He was a member of the Board of Trustees of the United Nations Voluntary Fund for Technical Cooperation in Human Rights and president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars. He serves as president of the Irish Branch of the International Law Association chair of the Institute for International Criminal Investigation. He is an Officer of the Order of Canada and a member of the Royal Irish Academy. Here is the full c.v.

Dr Yvonne McDermott is Senior Lecturer in Law at Bangor University, UK, where she is also Director of Teaching and Learning and Co-Director of the Bangor Centre for International Law. Yvonne is a graduate of the National University of Ireland, Galway (B. Corp. Law, LL.B.), Leiden University (LL.M. cum laude) and the Irish Centre for Human Rights (Ph.D.). Her research focuses on fair trial rights, international criminal procedure and international criminal law. She is the author of Fairness in International Criminal Trials (Oxford University Press, 2016).

Niamh Hayes has been the Head of Office for the Institute for International Criminal Investigations (IICI) in The Hague since September 2012. She is about to complete her Ph.D. on the investigation and prosecution of sexual violence by international criminal tribunals at the Irish Centre for Human Rights, National University of Ireland Galway. She previously worked for Women's Initiatives for Gender Justice as a legal consultant, and as an intern for the defence at the ICTY in the Karadzic case. She has lectured on international criminal law and international law at Trinity College Dublin and, along with Prof. William Schabas and Dr. Yvonne McDermott, is a co-editor of The Ashgate Research Companion to International Criminal Law: Critical Perspectives (Ashgate, 2013). She is the author of over 45 case reports for the Oxford Reports on International Criminal Law and has published numerous articles and book chapters on the investigation and prosecution of sexual and gender-based violence as international crimes.

Joseph Powderly is Assistant Professor of Public International Law at the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies, Leiden University. Between September 2008 and January 2010, he was a Doctoral Fellow/Researcher at the Irish Centre for Human Rights, where he worked, among other projects, on a Irish Government-funded investigation and report into the possible perpetration of crimes against humanity against the Rohingya people of North Rakhine State, Burma/Myanmar. He is currently in the process of completing his doctoral research which looks at the impact of theories of judicial interpretation on the development of international criminal and international humanitarian law. The central thesis aims to identify and analyze the potential emergence of a specific theory of interpretation within the sphere of judicial creativity. Along with Dr. Shane Darcy of the Irish Centre for Human Rights, he is co-editor of and contributor to the edited collection Judicial Creativity in International Criminal Tribunals which was published by Oxford University Press in 2010. He has written over 80 case-reports for the Oxford Reports on International Criminal Law, as well as numerous book chapters and academic articles on topics ranging from the principle of complementarity to Irish involvement in the drafting of the Geneva Conventions. In December 2010, he was appointed Managing Editor of the peer-reviewed journal Criminal Law Forum. His research interests while focusing on international criminal and international humanitarian law also include topics such as the history of international law and freedom of expression.