UGANDA: DEATH PENALTY MUST BE SCRAPPED - SEWANYANA

the Executive Director of the Foundation for Human Rights Initiative in Uganda, Mr Livingstone Sewanyana, said that "the campaign against the death penalty is a recognition that the essence of punishment is reform and rehabilitation." He advocated life imprisonment without parole as the alternative to the death penalty. "What we want is better investment in the law and order sector, ensuring that there is preventive strategy to ensure that offences don't occur." "When they occur what we do doing is ensuring that these people are punished to the extent that they learn and other people to learn from them. In fact, the world over, the death penalty has not proved to be an effective punishment." "The campaign against the death penalty is to ensure that we create conditions which allow people to live a life of dignity. When we have 900 people on death row in Ugandan prisons, it doesn't serve anyone any good. If anything, more crime continues to be committed, more people continue to suffer and the question is, what is the answer? That is what the campaign is all about."