CÔTE D'IVOIRE: DEFINITELY ABOLISHED THE DEATH PENALTY

March 9, 2015: the National Assembly of Côte d'Ivoire voted to definitely abolish the death penalty in the country.
Following the adoption by the Government on 15 January 2015, the Parliament unanimously approved two bills amending the Criminal Code and the Criminal Procedure Code, and replacing the death penalty with life imprisonment.
The complete abolition of the death penalty in Côte d'Ivoire put an end to 14 years of discrepancy between the Constitution, which had abolished capital punishment in 2000, and the criminal code still retaining it in numerous articles, though not applied because forbidden by the Constitution.
The National Group of Parliamentarians for Global Action (PGA) in Côte d'Ivoire was strongly supportive of this development and voted in favour of those bills.
Côte d'Ivoire’s new Constitution, approved by a national referendum held on 23 and 24 July 2000, provides for the abolition of the death penalty. Under Ivorian law the Constitution takes precedence over penal law, thus courts could no longer hand down death sentences.
Until 2000, the Criminal Code provided for the death penalty for murder and hijacking, but it has never been used since Côte d'Ivoire’s Independence in 1960. On 18 December 2014, the Côte d’Ivoire co-sponsored and voted in favour of the Resolution on a Moratorium on the Use of the Death Penalty at the UN General Assembly. (Sources: PGA/HOC, 10/03/2015)