The United Nations rights chief has hailed a decision by lawmakers in the Central African Republic to end capital punishment in the country.
No executions have been carried out in CAR since 1981, and last Friday lawmakers approved new legislation making death sentences illegal.
“I commend the adoption of a law in the Central African Republic abolishing the death penalty and encourage President Faustin-Archange Touadera to promulgate it,” Michelle Bachelet, UN high commissioner for human rights said in a statement on Wednesday.
“The death penalty is incompatible with fundamental tenets of human rights and dignity,” she said.
Since 2013, Central African Republic, which is the second-least developed nation in the world according to the UN, has been racked by civil war.
It will become the 24th African country to have abolished the death penalty, Bachelet noted. Approximately170 countries have abolished or introduced moratoria of death penalties in law or practice, so far.
The move will further bolster “the global trend towards universal abolition thus contributing to the enhancement and development of human rights,” she said.
