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Debate on the abolition of the death sentence in Zimbabwe
Restoration of Human Rights (ROHR)
January 27, 2011

Amnesty International in conjunction with Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum held a two day workshop from Monday the 24th to 25th of January to stir debate on exploring and developing concrete strategies for campaigning against the death penalty in Zimbabwe. The meeting was attended by Ms Dupe Atoki a Commissioner with the African Commission on Human and People's Rights (ACHPR), traditional leaders, the two legal secretaries from the two MDC factions Minister Gonese, Minister Coltart to give their party submissions with minister Mnangangwa from ZANU Pf failing to turn up. Forming part of the participants were lawyers, human rights defenders and members from various civil society organizations, among them NANGO, ZLHR, ROHR Zimbabwe and ZimRights.

Resounding consensus emerged among the participants that the death penalty should be abolished to uphold the unqualified right to life as guaranteed by regional instruments which include article 4 of the ACHPR, article 5 on the Rights and Welfare of the Child 1990, article 5 of the Arab Charter on Human Rights 1994 and international instruments among them article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948. Mr Maja a lawyer and Lecture with the University of Zimbabwe pin pointed that it was pertinent for the courts to infuse human rights on their interpretation of the law to make sure that the law should not impede on the right to life. In his presentation, Mr Maja also highlighted that there were 52 inmates in Zimbabwe's prisons that are currently waiting on the death row with others having spent more than a decade without knowing their fate. He further bemoaned the squalid inhuman conditions that amount to undermining of human dignity, prevalent in the prison cells for the inmates on death row. Executions were last carried out in 2004.

Participants unanimously agreed to come up with strategies and tools to influence key stakeholders to support the call for the abolition of the death penalty in the new constitution and other platforms like applications to the Supreme Court.

It was noted that there is a huge need to conduct civic education on the critical mass to conscentise them on the debate and equally important to present them with other available options available to the death penalty without necessarily advocating to take life as a form of sentence.

Traditional leaders denounced death penalty as a western idea brought about by the settler colonialist regime and submitted that it was un-African to kill as that the African culture places sacred importance to the right to life.

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