Côte d’Ivoire Accedes to the Second Optional Protocol to the ICCPR

Africa

Good news

By World coalition against the death penalty, on 8 July 2024

Côte d’Ivoire has acceded to the Second Optional Protocol to the ICCPR, which is the UN treaty aiming at the abolition of the death penalty, on 3 May 2024.

This comes almost a year after the vote by the Ivorian Senate in favor of a bill authorizing the ratification of the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights aimed at abolishing the death penalty (OP2-ICCPR), on June 6, 2023.

Despite death sentences having been handed down in the past, Côte d’Ivoire hasn’t carried out any executions have been carried out since its independence in 1960. The death penalty was then removed from the Ivorian legislative framework in the 2000 Constitution, and, in 2015, life imprisonment was introduced into the Penal Code to replace the death penalty.

In accordance with its article 8(2), the Protocol will enter into force on 3 August 2024, three months after date of deposition of the accession instruments.

Cote d’Ivoire is the 17^th African state to ratify the OP2-ICCPR. 91 UN Member States, out of the 173 States which are currently parties to the ICCPR, have now joined the Second Protocol.

image: Nyhl55555, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons