The use of the death penalty in Nigeria violates women's...

The use of the death penalty in Nigeria violates women's human rights by curbing their right to a fair trial and by exposing them to homicide charges for abortion-related offences, the rights group Amnesty International said in a report. The organisation said it "believes that the death penalty in its application in Nigeria in particular violates women's human rights to access to justice... and has a discriminatory effect on women in certain cases and for certain crimes." Nigerian women "of socio-economically deprived backgrounds, who are illiterate, have no husband and become pregnant are disproportionately affected" by laws that contradict the Convention of the Rights of the Child, to which their country is party, Amnesty said. It said that the death penalty remained on the books in Nigeria in both its constitution and in the Islamic law imposed in 12 northern states for a range of crimes including armed robbery, treason, murder, and culpable homicide, with the latter "often" being used in abortion-related cases. There have been "at least 33 death sentences since 1999," a summary of the report said, adding: "One of the convicted was a woman charged with a capital offence of culpable homicide, after allegedly having had a still-born baby, which event the court termed as an illegal abortion." As of July last year, there were 487 people on death row, 11 of whom were women, it said. Nigeria's version of Islamic law, or Sharia, was criticised in particular for its punishment of Muslims found to have engaged in extra-marital sex: 100 lashes for unmarried individuals, and death for unfaithful spouses. "By using the death penalty to regulate sexual behaviour, other rights are also being violated, such as the right to be free from discrimination, freedom of expression and association and the right to privacy," said Amnesty, which is fiercely against the death penalty being applied anywhere in the world. "The organisation opposes the criminalisation of consensual sexual relations between people over the age of consent," it said. Amnesty called on a Nigerian parliamentary group studying the country's death penalty to recommend the government "follows the international trend in abolishing the death penalty for all crimes for once and for all."