This report addresses Botswana’s compliance with its international human rights obligations with respect to the death penalty. Botswana continues to retain the death penalty—including as a punishment for non-lethal crimes such as espionage, aiding the enemy, cowardly behaviour, failure to supress mutiny, and terrorism—going against global trends and regional trends in Southern Africa.Moreover, the law calls for mandatory death sentences in cases of murder, treason, instigating a foreigner to invade the country, and aggravated piracy. A court sentenced one person to death in 2024, after courts sentenced two people to death in 2023. 16 people are currently on death row. Botswana’s retention of the death penalty is particularly concerning because the criminal justice system fails to respect the right to due process, officials use torture to obtain confessions, and detention conditions violate the prohibition against cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. The government appears to support the continued use of the death penalty, and legislation still authorizes the death penalty for premeditated murder without acceptable extenuating circumstances as well as other crimes that do not rise to the level of “most serious” under international human rights standards.

This report recommends that Botswana abolish the death penalty and ratify the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, improve detention conditions, and ensure that all State actors within the criminal justice system respect the due process and fair trial rights of all people charged with capital crimes.