Country votes to bring back death penalty just six years after abolishing it

Burkina Faso's parliament has voted to reinstate the death penalty, six years after it was abolished.The West African country's legislature adopted a new penal code on Tuesday that brings back capital punishment for crimes including terrorism, espionage and treason.All 71 members of the legislature voted in favour of the new code, the country's justice minister, Edasso Rodrigue Bayala, said.The vote reverses the abolition of the death penalty that had been in place since 2018, under the previous and democratically elected president, Roch Marc Christian Kabore.Human Rights Watch said that the last known execution in Burkina Faso took place in 1988.The country’s justice minister Edasso Rodrigue Bayala (Burkina Faso government)The path back to capital punishment began in December, when the junta's Council of Ministers approved a bill reinstating it.Human rights organisations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, criticised the move as repressive and an effort to suppress dissent.In 2024, Mr Bayala announced that “the issue of the death penalty … is being discussed (and) will be implemented.”The military junta has previously been accused of targeting dissidents by detaining human rights defenders and journalists.It also dissolved all political parties in the country and scrapped the laws governing them earlier this year.The vote comes as Burkina Faso, a landlocked country of 23 million people, grapples with a security crisis.Burkina Faso has a population of 23 million (Getty/iStock)Authorities are battling militant groups linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group.Rights groups have accused both government forces and militants from Jama'at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin, an al-Qaida-aligned group, of war crimes and crimes against humanity.A Human Rights Watch report this year said government forces killed over twice as many civilians as jihadis between 2023 and 2025.As of 2026, capital punishment is legal in more than 50 countries worldwide.The countries with the highest use of the death penalty include China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and the United States – which is the only G7 country, aside from Japan, to carry out executions.About half of all African nations still have the death penalty on their books, with Nigeria, Somalia, Botswana, and Egypt frequently putting people to death by capital punishment.