On 31 December 2024, the President of Zimbabwe, Emmerson Mnangagwa, signed the Death Penalty Abolition Bill into law, officially abolishing the death penalty for all crimes.
This legislation, previously introduced in Parliament in November 2023, received the government’s support in February 2024. It prohibits national courts from imposing the capital punishment, authorizes the Supreme Court to substitute death sentences with appropriate alternatives in appeals, prohibits the enforcement of previously imposed death sentences, and removes references to the death penalty from existing legislations.
The National Assembly passed the Bill, before its historic adoption by the Senate of Zimbabwe during the night of 11 December 2024.
However, a provision allows the death penalty to be reinstated during “any state of public emergency declared in terms of section 113 of the Constitution.”
Before this law, Zimbabwe had been de facto abolitionist, with no executions carried out since 2005. Previously, the Criminal Law Code, Criminal Procedure Law and the Defence Act then permitted the death penalty for murder under aggravating circumstances. As of 2023, Amnesty International reported at least 59 individuals were under sentence of death in the country.
While Zimbabwe acceded the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) in 1991, it has yet to sign and ratify its Second Optional Protocol aiming at the abolition of the death penalty (ICCPR-OP2).
PGA activities on the abolition of the death penalty in the country:
30 October 2024: Honorable Consilia Chinanzvavana and Honorable Kindness Paradza, Members of the Parliament of Zimbabwe and PGA Members, participated in the Parliamentary Roundtable on the Abolition of the Death Penalty, organized by PGA in the margins of its 45th Annual Forum, in Islamabad, Pakistan.
20 October 2021: Honorable Dorcas Sibanda, PGA Member and Chair of the National Group in Zimbabwe, participated in the online event co-organized by PGA and the World Coalition for the Abolition of the Death Penalty, to launch a how-to manual on “How to work with Parliamentarians on the Abolition of the Death Penalty.”
26 February – 1 March 2019: Honorable Dorcas Sibanda, Member of the National Assembly of Zimbabwe, Member of the Committee on Defence, Home Affairs and Security Services and of the Committee on Budget, Finance and Economic Development, PGA Member, attended the 7th World Congress against the Death Penalty, organized by Ensemble contre la peine de mort in Brussels (Belgium). During the Closing Ceremony, Hon. Sibanda delivered the final declaration on behalf of parliamentarians.
4 March 2016: During PGA's Round-Table and consultations on the Abolition of the Death Penalty with Ghanaian, Tanzanian and Zimbabwean Parliamentarians, hosted by the Parliament of Ghana in Accra, MPs from all parties and relevant actors were sensitized to the abolition of the death penalty.
