Sierra Leone is a de facto abolitionist country, having carried out its last execution in 1998.

In May 2014, Minister of Justice Franklyn Bai Kargbo committed before the United Nations Committee against Torture to abolishing capital punishment in law and to commuting the country’s last death row prisoners to life imprisonment. Despite this public statement, the country still sentenced 4 individuals to death in 2018 and 42 people remained on death row. While Sierra Leone has ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) in 1996, it has yet to ratify its Second Optional Protocol aiming at the abolition of the death penalty (ICCPR-OP2).

13-14 January 2014:  The Campaign for the Abolition of the Death Penalty was launched during a Regional Conference on the Abolition of the Death Penalty in Freetown (Sierra Leone).