Death by hanging, firing squad breach of human dignity — Justice Adjei

A Justice of the Supreme Court and a Judge of the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights (AfCHPR), Sir Dennis Dominic Adjei, has said the continent's mandatory death penalty regimes violate obligations under the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights.

Justice Adjei said regardless of whether a sentence was mandatory, the AfCHPR had held that hanging, electrocution and death by firing squad all amounted to inhuman or degrading treatment under Article 5 of the Charter, which guarantees respect for the dignity inherent in every human being and expressly prohibits cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment and treatment.

Delivering a public lecture at the Christ Temple Campus of the Central University, Abossey Okai, to mark the 20th anniversary of the operationalisation of the AfCHPR, Justice Adjei explained that once a country ratified a human rights treaty, it subordinated its own constitution to that treaty and could not invoke domestic law to escape the obligations it had voluntarily assumed, citing the death penalty to illustrate this principle in practice.