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DEATH PENALTY: SECOND HANDS OFF CAIN MISSION TO GHANA FOR ABOLITION
March 3, 2011: Radical Parliamentarian Matteo Mecacci is today in Accra to participate in the National Constitutional Conference. The conference is a crucial chapter in the process started one year ago by the Constitutional Revision Commission, which was created by the President of the Republic in order to amend Ghana's 1992 Constitution.
After the mission by Radical Parliamentarians Marco Perduca and Elisabetta Zamparutti to Ghana in December, the commitment by Hands off Cain and the Transnational and Transparty Non Violent Radical Party continues. Its goal is to achieve a moratorium on executions and abolish the death penalty in the African continent.
As well as the 12 principal themes in the orders of the day, the Conference will examine the theme of human rights and, in particular, whether to keep or remove the death penalty from of the new Consitution. On this topic, Matteo Mecacci, as a member of the Board of Directors of Hands Off Cain and as Speaker of the OSCE on Human Rights, Democracy and Humantiarian Issues, was invited to give reasons for abolition and to report on the positive evolution towards ending the death penalty around the world.
The National Constitutional Conference was inaugurated on March 1 by President of the Republic John Evans Atta Mills and will conclude on March 5. It must give its main reform proposals to the Commission of Consitutional Revision. They will then be presented to the President of the Republic, who with the Government will jointly submit the proposals to Parliament.
The Commission believes that the process of revision will be finished during 2011.
This second mission in Ghana is part of Hands Off Cain's “Africa Project” for the realisation of the UN resolution for the moratorium on executions and the abolition of the death penalty in Africa. The two year project, financed in part by the European Union, foresees missions in 8 African countries for the first year and the holding of two regional conferences in the second year. (Sources: HOC, 03/03/2011)
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