If you're sentenced to death in Ghana, don't panic. Chances are, your life will be spared.

Capital punishment is legal in the country, but an execution has not taken place since 1993. In July of that year, 12 prisoners who had been convicted of armed robbery or murder were executed by firing squad.

Since then there has been, in practice, a moratorium on the death penalty.

But that does not mean that Ghanaians are not sentenced to death. In fact, a comparison of the Annual Reports of Ghana Prisons Service shows that the number of prisoners condemned to death rose slightly in the past few years. In 1998, 271 people sat on death row. As of the end of 2002, there were 293; eight of them were women.

There is no public list of the names of the prisoners on death row.

Convictions of murder, treason or armed robbery can result in a death sentence. Executions are to be carried out either by hanging or firing squad, though Ghana's last hanging was performed in 1968.

On occasion, the President has granted amnesty to prisoners on death row. In 1997, President Jerry John Rawlings reviewed the cases of condemned prisoners who were old or ill and had served ten years or more on death row. He commuted 15 of their sentences to life imprisonment, and set seven free, reports Amnesty International, an international NGO which advocates the abolishment of capital punishment.

Rawlings' actions created controversy, says Sam Bosompem, Principal Administrative Officer of the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ). 32 death row inmates protested, arguing that their sentences should have been commuted as well. The government responded by saying that it had based its decisions on a number of factors.

In spite of the controversy, in April 2000, the government commuted 100 people's death sentences to life in prison, reports Amnesty International.

Ghana's unwillingness to execute prisoners follows a worldwide trend. Since 1990, 35 countries have abolished the death penalty, says Amnesty International's website. Today, it says,112 of the world's 190 countries have abolished capital punishment in law or in practice.

Many African nations are among those not practicing capital punishment. According to Amnesty International, by the end of 2002, ten countries in Africa had legally abolished the death penalty, and ten others had abolished it in practice.

Ten of the 15 ECOWAS members do not execute prisoners. In total, almost half of Africa's 50 countries do not practice execution.

Although Ghana has not executed anyone in the past ten years, Amnesty International stresses the importance of officially abolishing capital punishment in Ghana.

As of now, death row inmates do face the possibility of execution. At any moment, the government can decide to carry out the law as written. The system's uncertainty, with prisoners not knowing how much longer they will live, says Juliet Gbessay of Ghana's chapter of Amnesty International, constitutes "an act of torture."

Thus, Amnesty International and other groups are working to get Parliament to remove capital punishment from the statute books.

CHRAJ strongly opposes the death penalty. Bosompem says that civil society must get behind the abolition movement in order for it to be successful. But, he says, the backing of civilians can be fickle. "When there's a spate of armed robberies, there's less support for an end to capital punishment," he explains.

Abolitionist groups were heartened on February 27, 2001, when the then Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Nana Akufo-Addo, declared that he did not support the death penalty. But Akufo-Addo emphasized that his position did not necessarily reflect the government's. According to Amnesty International, the current government has never expressed a wish to abolish the death penalty.