Zimbabwe’s abolition of the death penalty in December 2024 marks the latest victory of the global movement to end capital punishment. Achieved through a decade-long campaign combining research, partnerships between local and international civil society organisations and persistent advocacy, Zimbabwe’s reform shows it’s possible to challenge traditional views of retributive justice, even in countries with strong public support for the death penalty. But while this and other recent victories inspire hope, civil society continues to face the challenge of confronting states like China, Iran and Saudi Arabia, where executions continue to rise and activists risk persecution for their abolitionist work.

On the last day of 2024, when its Death Penalty Abolition Act came into effect, Zimbabwe became the 127th country to abolish the death penalty. Zimbabwe’s journey offers important lessons about how evidence-based campaigning and local-international partnerships can change entrenched systems of punishment. It challenges conventional wisdom that strong public support makes death penalty reform politically impossible.

Zimbabwe’s path to abolition

The process began roughly a decade ago, driven by a partnership between the UK-based Death Penalty Project, which provides free legal assistance to death row inmates worldwide, and Veritas, a civil society organisation (CSO) based in Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare. Rather than arguing against capital punishment solely on moral grounds, their approach centred on gathering evidence to counter claims that strong public support prevented abolition, while building a broad coalition of supporters across political and social divides.

A crucial turning point came in 2017, when the Death Penalty Project surveyed 1,200 Zimbabweans about their views. The results challenged prevailing assumptions: 61 per cent supported the death penalty, but most indicated they’d accept abolition if it became government policy. When presented with specific death penalty scenarios, most respondents opposed capital punishment in five out of six situations. This showed how abstract support for capital punishment often crumbles when people confront its practical implications.

This was followed by a 2019 study based on in-depth interviews with 42 opinion leaders, including politicians, legal practitioners and civil society, media and religious figures. An overwhelming 90 per cent supported abolition, with many expressing concerns about wrongful convictions and viewing the death penalty as a human rights abuse. It helped that President Emmerson Mnangagwa, while authoritarian in many respects, has long opposed the death penalty, describing it as ‘odious and obnoxious’.

The final push came through a coalition of opposition politicians and local and international civil society groups. Opposition member of parliament Edwin Mushoriwa led the legislative effort through a private member’s bill, while CSOs mounted public education campaigns and lobbied government officials. The Death Penalty Project provided technical expertise and international credibility, while Veritas mobilised local support.

Recent victories

Zimbabwe’s success follows other recent victories in the global abolition movement. Zambia abolished the death penalty in December 2022 after a moratorium lasting 25 years. The change came after years of persistent advocacy coordinated by a broad coalition of human rights groups, which pressured for change domestically and internationally. They submitted reports to Constitutional Review Commissions, the African Union’s (AU) African Peer Review Mechanism and the United Nations Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review process. Organisations engaged with foreign diplomatic missions and developed partnerships with local and international media, ensuring sustained public attention on the issue and helping create international pressure for change.

When President Hakainde Hichilema, who once faced trumped-up treason charges carrying the death penalty, took office in 2021, the groundwork laid by civil society helped convince him to make abolition a priority. At the time of abolition, there were 380 people on death row.

Ghana adopted a two-step approach. In July 2023, its parliament passed legislation removing capital punishment from the Criminal Offences Act for ordinary crimes. Then in December, another parliamentary vote abolished the death penalty for all crimes, including treason and military offences, replacing it with life imprisonment. This incremental approach demonstrated how initial reforms can build momentum for complete abolition. To make it happen, local human rights groups worked closely with international organisations such as Amnesty International and the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty.

Malaysia has taken a more gradual path. Two bills passed in April 2023 ended the mandatory death penalty for 12 offences, including murder, treason and terrorism, while completely removing it for seven others. The reform affected over 1,300 people on death row, who were given 90 days to apply for resentencing. Civil society efforts to demonstrate that mandatory sentencing disproportionately affected poor and excluded people while providing no additional deterrent effect proved key to bringing about change.

Global trends: progress amid challenges

The abolition movement keeps gaining momentum, particularly in Africa, where only seven of the 55 AU states still sentence people to death and carry out executions. Twenty-six African countries have now completely abolished the death penalty, with many others maintaining moratoriums on executions.

International legal frameworks against capital punishment are growing stronger, with 92 states now party to the 1989 Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, aiming at abolition of the death penalty. The latest to join have been Côte d’Ivoire and Zambia in 2024. Similar regional agreements exist in the Americas and Europe.

However, challenges persist, particularly in authoritarian states, a few of which are responsible for most executions. According to Amnesty International’s latest report, in 2023 the lowest number of countries carried out the highest number of known executions in close to a decade. Totals didn’t include the thousands of people likely executed in China, the world’s lead executioner, and North Korea and Vietnam, where the use of the death penalty is widespread but there’s no data available.

Secrecy indicates a determination to use the death penalty as a tool to instil fear: in China and Vietnam, death penalty figures are classified as state secrets, but the authorities lift the veil of secrecy on some cases to remind people that transgressions can be harshly punished. Civil society groups focus on international advocacy and documentation efforts, working to maintain pressure despite limited access.

The recent surge is largely attributable to a spike in executions for drug-related offences in Iran, with 853 executions reported in 2023. Driven by the authorities’ complete disregard for international human rights law and standards, under which drug offences shouldn’t be punished by death, the trend has disproportionately affected Iran’s most excluded groups, particularly the oppressed Baluchi ethnic minority. The theocratic regime had already escalated the use of death penalty in 2022 as a tool to suppress protest movements.

Next is Saudi Arabia, where numbers have risen sharply under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, despite desperate attempts to project a modernising image. Bin Salman’s regime executed at least 172 people in 2023, many for drugs-related offences. Along with Iran, Saudia Arabia accounted for almost 90 per cent of the known total of executions. In both countries, the death penalty comes after flawed trials and the extensive use of torture to extract confessions, as part of a criminal justice system designed to repress dissent.

Among the 16 countries that carried out executions in 2023 there’s a notable outlier: the USA. This is one of the few democracies that retain the death penalty and the only one to have recently used it, with 24 executions carried out in 2023. No progress is likely under the second Trump administration, with the incoming president recently promising to ‘vigorously pursue’ the death penalty.

The way forward

Civil society continues campaigning to stop executions and advocating for abolition as part of broader human rights reforms. Its arguments emphasise the irreversible nature of execution in systems where miscarriages of justice are inevitable, particularly in regimes with flawed criminal justice systems, and the proven lack of deterrent effect. Most fundamentally, civil society argues that capital punishment violates fundamental human rights enshrined in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights – the rights to life and freedom from cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment.

Civil society efforts combine domestic and international advocacy, litigation, media outreach and public education, and leverage international scrutiny to help bring about positive change. This includes engaging with the Universal Periodic Review process, where states’ human rights records are assessed by other states, with civil society input. Several campaigns specifically target democratic holdouts like Japan and the USA, whose retention of capital punishment increasingly puts them at odds with the human rights norms they claim to profess.

Zimbabwe’s experience demonstrates that success is possible, even in difficult civic space conditions and where abolition once seemed unlikely, through sound research, sustained advocacy, international solidarity and political leadership. Each success brings lessons that civil society worldwide can build upon, sustaining hope that through persistent efforts, often spanning decades, cruel systems of punishment can ultimately be changed.

OUR CALLS FOR ACTION

  • Zimbabwean civil society should urge the government to follow up its abolition of the death penalty by enacting further reforms to respect civic freedoms.
  • Zimbabwean civil society should share their experience and support campaigns for abolition in other African countries.
  • Global civil society should urge states that still apply the death penalty to commit to moratoriums and abolition.

For interviews or more information, please contact research@civicus.org

Cover photo by Dominika Zarzycka/NurPhoto via Getty Images