“Tanzania still maintains death penalty in capital offences which is applied in the most restrictive manner,” the report read in part.

According to the Tanzania’s minister of good governance, in the President’s office, Mathias Chikawe, the reason for maintaining the sentence was that the public opinion was still divided on the appropriateness of the death penalty as “majority of the people were retentionists.”

Minister Chikawe led the Tanzania’s government delegation in presenting the national report on human rights at United Nations’ Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR), early October this year.

“On death penalty, public opinion is still divided. For this reason, Tanzania has not acceded to the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights”, it was stated in the draft report of the Working Group on the Universal Periodic Review after Tanzania presented her report on Human Rights.

However, in implementing this kind of sentence, Tanzania claims in the report that “procedure for establishing the guilt of an accused is stringent and thorough enough to ensure due process is duly observed”.

The report stated some of the procedures regarding death sentence in Tanzania that when the sentence was issued and confirmed by the Court of Appeal, the President directs the Advisory Committee on the Prerogative of Mercy to advise on the propriety of carrying out the death sentence.

It was further stated that, the said committee considers the views of relatives of both the victim and the convict, including the convict’s own submission to the committee.

Due to such steps that are followed in accomplishing the sentence, the report argued that such mechanism to a large extent mitigates against the carrying out of the death sentence.

With such a mechanism, it was informed in the report that “for the last 16 years Tanzania has been exercising a moratorium on executions”.

However, countries challenged the Tanzania’s stance of embracing the death penalty sentence.  They were concerned that the sentence should be abolished for it is against the right to life for all human beings.

“Sweden would like to ask what actions the United Republic of Tanzania is planning to undertake to ratify the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR-OP 2) that aims to abolish the death penalty?” queried the representative of Sweden.

The United Kingdom raised similar concerns as she asked whether there were any plans by Tanzania to accede the ICCPR-OP 2; and that what extent the civil society was consulted in the preparation of human rights national report and in the follow-up.

As he responded to these concerns, Minister Chikawe told the world that Tanzania was in the process of making a new Constitution which would incorporate and consider, among other things, the abolishing of death penalty sentence.

“We are going to make the constitution making process inclusive; that is, we will include everyone in the process. The new constitution will address a lot of issues. Even the issue of death penalty will be put to rest”, said Chikawe at the Universal Periodic Review meeting in Geneva, Switzerland.

He further reiterated that despite the presence of the death penalty in Tanzania, it is now 16 years since the last person was hanged in line with this sentence.

Tanzania presented her human rights national Report, that has been prepared in accordance with the provisions of paragraph 5 (e) of Resolution 60/251 adopted by the UN General Assembly in March 2006 and in accordance with the General Guidelines set out in Resolution 5/1 adopted by the Human Rights council in June 2007.