Burkina Faso Reinstates the Death Penalty in New Penal Code

Burkina Faso death penalty: Burkina Faso has brought back the death penalty, the country’s justice ministry said on Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2026, after all 71 members of the military-led government’s appointed legislature voted to adopt a new penal code. Capital punishment had been removed from Burkina Faso’s penal code in 2018, and the country’s last recorded execution was in 1988.

The new code “aims to strengthen public order, consolidate the nation’s fundamental values and guarantee security for people and property,” the ministry said, according to AFP. The government of Capt. Ibrahim Traoré, who has led the country since a 2022 coup, had adopted a draft bill to reinstate capital punishment in December 2025.

Which crimes now carry the death penalty

The state news agency AIB said crimes punishable by death include “acts of terrorism, espionage, treason, patricide and importing expired or banned products causing death,” according to TRT Afrika. Justice Minister Edasso Rodrigue Bayala said the penalty applies to “perpetrators or accomplices” of those acts, RFI reported.

The code also toughens many other penalties, according to RFI. People convicted of embezzling public funds above an amount that has not been made public will face life in prison and a fine of three times the sum taken. Fines rise sharply across many offenses, road-safety penalties are stiffened, and new offenses cover information and communication technologies. The code also reaffirms the criminalization of homosexuality, RFI reported.

Why the death penalty was abolished in 2018

Burkina Faso removed the death penalty from its penal code in 2018, at a time when it was seeking the extradition from France of François Compaoré, the younger brother of former President Blaise Compaoré, over his alleged role in the 1998 killing of investigative journalist Norbert Zongo, according to RFI.

Rights groups’ objections

Amnesty International urged the government to drop the plan when it was announced in December 2025. “The death penalty is the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment, and an irreversible denial of the right to life,” said Marceau Sivieude, Amnesty’s regional director for West and Central Africa. He said the punishment “has no unique deterrent effect” and “carries the danger of being used as a repressive tool to punish dissent.” Amnesty opposes the death penalty in all cases.

The vote comes as Burkina Faso, which is fighting jihadist insurgents, has drawn closer to neighbouring Mali and Niger, also run by military governments. The three formed the Alliance of Sahel States and left the regional bloc ECOWAS, a move covered in our report on the AES withdrawal from ECOWAS.

What happens next

The reports on the vote did not say when the new code takes full effect or whether it could affect pending cases. Because the last execution was in 1988, no one has been put to death in Burkina Faso in nearly four decades. Amnesty has said that countries that still use the death penalty are “an isolated minority.” For more of our coverage of the region, see our geopolitics hub.

Additional details

The legislature that passed the code is the Transitional Legislative Assembly, whose members are appointed rather than elected. Amnesty’s December 2025 statement named “high treason,” “terrorism” and “acts of espionage” among the offenses in the original draft.

Featured image: National Assembly building, Ouagadougou. Photo: Sputniktilt, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Sources

• RFI: Burkina Faso: la junte au pouvoir rétablit la peine de mort (in French)
• TRT Afrika: Burkina Faso reinstates death penalty to ‘guarantee security’
• NAMPA/AFP: Burkina Faso junta reinstates death penalty: justice ministry
• Africanews: Burkina Faso reinstates death penalty
• Amnesty International: Plans to reinstate death penalty must be stopped (Dec. 5, 2025)