Kingdom of Eswatini Stakeholder Report for the United Nations Universal Periodic Review: The Death Penalty
Country: Eswatini (formerly Swaziland)
Partners: Prisoners' Future Foundation, World Coalition Against the Death Penalty
Issues: Death Penalty
Mechanism: UN Universal Periodic Review
Report Type: Stakeholder Report
This report addresses the Kingdom of Eswatini's compliance with human rights obligations
related to the death penalty. Eswatini has had a de facto moratorium on executions since
1983. Since then, courts have sentenced 45 people to death, and the King has commuted
44 of those death sentences to life imprisonment. Courts have not handed down new death
sentences since 2016, but one person remained on death row as of the end of 2024. The
death penalty remains on the books as a possible punishment for both murder and treason.
In its 2021 Universal Periodic Review, Eswatini supported a recommendation to strengthen
awareness-raising campaigns and public debates on the death penalty and to ratify the
Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights,
aiming at the abolition of the death penalty, but it has taken no steps to implement the
recommendation. In March 2026, Prisoners' Future Foundation (PFF) traveled to the Kingdom of Eswatini
for four days on behalf of both PFF and the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty.
The purpose of the visit was to find and connect with organizations in Eswatini that are
willing to work toward ending the death penalty, to link these organizations to the global
movement against capital punishment, and to document the human rights situation on the
ground. This report incorporates PFF's findings. This report also addresses human rights concerns related to detention conditions and the
arbitrary detention of people deported from the United States.
