Burkina Faso Assembly Votes to Reintroduce Death Penalty, Drawing Rights Warnings

Burkina Faso’s transitional legislature voted unanimously Tuesday to reintroduce the death penalty in a revised penal code, a major reversal of the West African country’s 2018 abolition of capital punishment for ordinary crimes.

The Assemblée législative du peuple, or ALP, adopted the revised code in a plenary session in Ouagadougou on Oct. 20, according to the assembly’s official communiqué. The measure passed with all 71 voting members present backing it. The revised code restores capital punishment for several offenses, including high treason, terrorism-related acts, espionage, parricide and the importation of expired or prohibited products that result in death. Justice Minister Edasso Rodrigue Bayala presented and defended the bill on behalf of the government.

Bayala and the government cast the change as part of Burkina Faso’s fight against armed Islamist groups, which have fueled years of insecurity. According to multiple news reports, Bayala argued that the previous law’s relative leniency had become a recruiting argument for armed groups, which could tell potential recruits that a terrorism conviction would bring no more than life imprisonment.

The vote does not, however, appear to complete the legal process. As of Oct. 21, the ALP had adopted the text, but there was no confirmed presidential promulgation decree or publication in the Official Gazette, based on the available research. That means it should not yet be treated as definitively in force.

Human Rights Watch warned that the move could widen the ruling junta’s tools for repression while increasing the risk of wrongful or unfair death sentences in a justice system with documented due-process problems. The rights group said terrorism cases in Burkina Faso are handled by a specialized judicial unit created in 2017, where it has previously documented slow investigations and serious procedural failures. A former terrorism court judge, quoted by Human Rights Watch, described the logic behind extended pretrial detention in such cases as “better to violate the right to liberty in order to preserve the right to life.”

Ilaria Allegrozzi, senior Sahel researcher at Human Rights Watch, told The Associated Press that “the failure of the death penalty as a crime deterrent has been globally acknowledged and the military junta in Burkina Faso should maintain the prohibition on its use.” Burkina Faso has not carried out a known judicial execution in decades, but the legislature’s vote marks a sharp break with the direction set by the 2018 penal code.

The measure comes under the military-led transition headed by Capt. Ibrahim Traoré, who took power in a September 2022 coup. Since then, rights groups and press freedom organizations have documented curbs on civic and political freedoms, including media suspensions, pressure on journalists and actions against unions and civil society groups. The return of capital punishment also runs against a broader international trend toward moratoriums and abolition, backed by repeated calls from the U.N. General Assembly and the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights.