Government Corrects UN Special Rapporteur on Basic Error of Zambian Law

The Government of the Republic of Zambia has issued a formal correction to the news release of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Rights to Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and of Association, which rests on a fundamental and readily verifiable error of law.

The Rapporteur describes treason in Zambia as a "capital offence". It is not. Zambia abolished the death penalty under the Penal Code in December 2022 and removed it from military law through the Defence (Amendment) Act in December 2023. No offence in Zambian law today carries the death penalty, and the maximum sentence for treason is life imprisonment. No person charged with treason in Zambia faces execution. This is not a matter of interpretation. It is a matter of public record.

It is also a matter of the United Nations' own records. In December 2024, Zambia acceded, without reservation, to the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the treaty by which states permanently renounce capital punishment. The instrument of accession was deposited by the Minister of Justice at United Nations Headquarters in New York, and the Protocol entered into force for Zambia in March 2025. The abolition the Rapporteur has overlooked is registered with the very institution in whose name she speaks.

That a UN mandate holder should be unaware of one of Zambia's most internationally commended human rights reforms, and that UN News should repeat the error, raises serious questions about the rigour on which the wider statement rests. If the release is mistaken on a point this basic and this checkable, its broader characterisations cannot be taken on trust.

The Government further rejects the description of accused persons as "political detainees" facing "concocted charges". These matters are before Zambia's independent courts, where the accused are legally represented and enjoy the full protection of due process. Language that pronounces on guilt, innocence or motive before the courts have ruled does not defend the rule of law; it prejudges it.

Zambia therefore calls on the Special Rapporteur and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to correct the error publicly, with the same prominence as the original release. Zambia remains, as it has always been, ready to engage with UN human rights mechanisms through the established channels, on the basis of fact.