Rachel Sutphin wasn’t thinking about the death penalty when her father, Montgomery County Sheriff’s Deputy Cpl. Eric Sutphin, was killed on duty in Blacksburg, Virginia, in 2006. She was only 9, after all. Nor did she really understand it two years later, when a jury sentenced her father’s killer, William Morva, to death.

But as Mr. Morva’s lawyers periodically appealed the verdict over the next decade, his impending death became a recurring source of anxiety in Ms. Sutphin’s life. By the time she was in high school, Ms. Sutphin had begun writing letters to state legislators arguing against the death penalty. In 2017, when Mr. Morva’s appeals were exhausted and a date for execution was set, Ms. Sutphin started speaking out publicly and asked then-Gov. Terry McAuliffe for clemency, which he denied. Mr. Morva was killed by lethal injection later that year. 

“To me, his death feels like an injustice in our [family’s search for] justice,” says Ms. Sutphin, who plans to become a pastor after graduating from Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia, in May. “We are going to kill this man for killing someone else, to prevent more killings?”

In February, Virginia’s state legislature voted to abolish the death penalty – a significant change for a state that has executed more people than any other since its founding and is second only to Texas in executions since the late 1970s. Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam is expected to sign the abolition into law any day now, making Virginia the 23rd state to end the death penalty, and the first state to do so in the South, an area that far surpasses all other regions in executions.  

The commonwealth’s move on this issue tracks with shifts in public opinion. A Gallup Poll from last fall found that 55% of Americans support the death penalty, down from a peak of 80% in the mid-1990s. And for the first time, a majority (60%) say life imprisonment without parole is a better punishment for murder than capital punishment. 

Frank Green/Richmond Times-Dispatch/AP/File

Rachel Sutphin, the daughter of Cpl. Eric Sutphin, who was fatally shot in 2006, poses after a hearing at the Capitol in Richmond, Virginia, Nov. 21, 2019. A bill to abolish the death penalty has been filed by Delegate Lee Carter, a Democrat from Manassas, and several additional bills are expected. Ms. Sutphin said she felt no closure or solace when her father's killer was executed in 2017.

Change on this issue has come swiftly: Virginia will be the 11th state to abolish capital punishment so far in the 21st century. Between 2010 and 2020, the number of death sentences imposed nationwide was less than half of what it was the decade before. And it is broad-based: Although Democrats are more likely to support life imprisonment without parole over the death penalty, the percentage of Republicans who feel the same way has increased 10 points in the past four years. 

To be sure, Virginia’s move reflects a larger political transformation in the former Confederate capital, which has shifted from red to purple to blue in the past few decades. But the death penalty is also one of a host of issues, like LGBTQ rights and marijuana legalization, where there’s been a dramatic, and rapid, shift in thought nationwide – a shift driven largely by millennials. 

“There has been a generational shift around views of marijuana, abolition of the death penalty, and acceptance of gay marriage,” says Delegate Mike Mullin, a Democrat who sponsored the Virginia House bill. “My generation, Republican or Democrat, have wanted a new way.” 

A racial justice lens

According to Gallup, Americans between the ages of 18 and 34 are far less likely than their older peers to support the death penalty. Roughly one-quarter of millennials say they would support the death penalty over life imprisonment without parole, compared with 40% of older Americans.

But while public opinion has been shifting quickly, it didn’t happen automatically, say activists. 

This year marks the 30th anniversary of Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, which launched a five-year abolition plan in 2015. The group canvassed the state to find “unexpected or surprising allies,” says executive director Michael Stone, such as libertarians, Republican women, and faith leaders. 

One of those faith leaders is the Rev. Dr. LaKeisha Cook, a justice reform organizer at the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy. She recently started advocating against the death penalty, holding prayer vigils at past lynching sites. 

“Coming off of the summer, hearing the voices of Black Lives Matter, I think that we need to look at this fight against capital punishment specifically from a racial justice lens,” says Dr. Cook. “I’m so grateful to our legislators for not only recognizing our past, but putting us on the path toward reconciliation.”

A 1990 study by the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that defendants who murdered white people were more likely to be sentenced to death than those who murdered Black people, and recent studies have come to similar conclusions. As Delegate Mullins points out, of the almost 1,400 people who have been put to death in Virginia since 1608, it wasn’t until 1997 that a white man was executed for killing a Black man. This racial aspect of capital punishment isn’t lost on millennials, he adds.

Death penalty opponents also point to fallibility (since 2000, there has been an average of four exonerations in the country per year), as well as cost. Because of the high costs associated with a capital trial and various appeals, lifetime incarceration costs a state less money than execution. Virginia is expected to save almost $4 million per year by abolishing the death penalty. 

Capital cases can also be more taxing on the victims’ families, as Ms. Sutphin pointed out, since the trials typically last four times longer than non-capital trials. With his appeals, Mr. Morva’s trial lasted 11 years – which was relatively quick compared to most death penalty cases. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, convicts’ average time on death row is more than double that. 

Steve Helber/AP

Virginia state Sen. Emmett Hanger (front), a Republican from Augusta County, looks at the vote tally board during a vote on a death penalty abolition bill at the Senate session at the Science Museum of Virginia in Richmond, Feb. 22, 2021. The Senate passed the bill 22-16.

“Pro-life” and against capital punishment

Views of the death penalty have never been exactly split down party lines, with many conservatives opposing capital punishment on religious or moral grounds. Republicans in red states such as Wyoming, Kansas, Kentucky, Montana, and Missouri, for example, have recently sponsored legislation to abolish it.

Delegate Carrie Coyner, a Republican representing Chesterfield, Virginia, says she voted to end the state’s death penalty because she is “pro-life,” and believes that applies to both unborn babies as well as criminals who may have done “something heinous.” As a lawyer, Delegate Coyner knows what it feels like to lie awake at night wondering how she could have argued cases differently. She can’t imagine what that would be like with capital punishment on the table.  

“We can all be better than we are today,” says Ms. Coyner. “I have a hard time reconciling that idea [with] the state stepping in and choosing to determine that we are going to kill someone.”

Still, Ms. Coyner was one of only three House Republicans who ultimately voted in favor of the bill. And despite some initial Republican support in the upper chamber, no Senate Republicans signed on.

Supporters argue the death penalty is a just punishment for murder. Many add that even if a convicted person is sentenced to life imprisonment without parole, execution is the only way to absolutely ensure the perpetrator will never be on the street again – and to give victims’ families closure. Some also believe capital punishment is a deterrent, though opponents point out that states with death penalty laws don’t have lower crime rates than those without.

Yet execution isn’t necessarily the justice that all victims’ families want, says Ms. Sutphin.

“There’s a common misconception that all murder victims’ families want the death penalty, and once they’re given the death penalty, everything is OK,” says Ms. Sutphin. “But now I just have more dates of death to remember: my father’s and Morva’s.”

When Amir Jabareen heard a volley of gunshots ring out close to his home last spring, he knew he would have to wait several minutes before venturing out.

That would give time for whoever the gunman was to leave the scene and for Mr. Jabareen, an engineering student, to safely check out what happened.

This is what living in the midst of an epidemic of unchecked violent street crime has taught Arab citizens of Israel like Mr. Jabareen, who lives in Umm el-Fahm, an Arab city of some 56,000 astride the Green Line in north-central Israel.

In the last four years, the homicide rate in Israeli Arab communities has jumped 50%, vaulting violent crime – and the national police force’s muted response to it – to Arab voters’ top concern by far in national elections this month.

Heavily armed crime organizations are blamed for the violence, but overall, experts say, the rise in crime is a product of several factors, some of which are rooted in a fundamental inequality of access to resources and opportunity that Israeli Arabs have long known.

According to a December survey of Arab voters conducted by the Konrad Adenauer Program for Jewish-Arab Cooperation, 51.9% said violent crime was the most important issue for them. Dealing with poverty was a distant second at 13.4%, ahead of concerns over other equity issues. Other surveys have found it also ranks far above the stalemate in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

In Umm el-Fahm, Mr. Jabareen was among the first people to reach the victim, a man sprawled on the steps that led to his home. An ambulance came in minutes, but the police, he says, took an hour and a half to arrive at the scene and only returned two days later to take photos and collect spent shells.

“It felt like there was no interest in doing even the bare minimum. It basically confirms what we keep seeing, that they [the police] are not really interested in solving cases,” Mr. Jabareen says, standing across the street from the crime scene, too shaken nearly a year later to step any closer.

Sought-after voters

As Israel’s deadlocked political system hurtles into its fourth election in two years, the votes of Israel’s Arab minority have become more sought-after than ever before. But as parties across the political spectrum seek their support, Arab voters are asking them what they will do to stop the violence.

They say authorities have purposely neglected their communities for decades, and are demanding not only an increased police presence, but also more aggressive detective work to solve crimes.

Arab leaders say that could help establish faith between Arab citizens and the state after years of distrust, whose origins date to the founding of Israel and the view of the Arab minority as a fifth column.

Arab citizens cite statistics they say prove systemic disregard for their safety. Of the 74 murders that took place in the Arab sector in 2020 by November, only 22% resulted in indictments, compared with a 53% indictment rate in Jewish homicide cases, according to the Haaretz newspaper.

By the end of the year, the number of Arab citizens murdered was approximately twice that of Jews, even though Arabs make up just 20% of the population, according to The Abraham Initiatives, an organization that promotes equality among Jewish and Arab citizens of Israel.

On Tuesday, a 15-year-old named Mohammed Ades was killed and his 12-year-old friend seriously wounded when they were gunned down just 100 feet from a police station in Jaljulya, an Arab town in central Israel.

Aida Touma-Suleiman, a lawmaker from the Joint List, the largest Arab party, called the shooting “heartbreaking” and made it clear whom she holds accountable: “The blood is on the criminals, but the blame is also on the government and police who have neglected our children.”

Heidi Levine

Thousands of residents of the mostly Arab city of Umm el-Fahm, Israel, took to the streets to protest police brutality as well as gun violence in the Arab community, March 5, 2021. Residents of nearby towns and Israeli Jews joined the protests, as did representatives from political parties. A wave of violent crime in Arab-majority areas of Israel is a top concern of Arab voters.

Government funds

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who now is courting the same Arab voters he derided as a threat in past elections, promised last week that the government will put $45 million into combating violence in Arab neighborhoods and cities. Most Arab leaders, including Ayman Odeh, who heads the Joint List, dismissed it as both overdue and insufficient.

One criticism is that most of the funding is earmarked for the construction and renovation of police stations in Arab areas.

Nasreen Haddad Haj-Yahya, director of the Arab-Jewish Relations Program at the Israel Democracy Institute, argues that what Arab neighborhoods and towns need more than additional police stations are “police who can investigate crimes and show results.”

“Just as the state knows how to provide for the needs of the Jewish population, it has to do the same for the Arab population,” Dr. Haddad Haj-Yahya says, pointing out how successfully the Israeli police tackled organized crime in Jewish cities in the 1990s.

“In the streets, there is a feeling of fear,” she says, “because now shootings are happening even in broad daylight; the criminals know the towns have become like the Wild West, so they can do what they want.”

Contributing factors

The crime surge is traced to a combination of problems. A decadeslong lack of investment has led to disproportionately high levels of poverty and unemployment in the Arab sector, especially among young men, which have intensified during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Arab citizens face discrimination getting credit or bank loans, Dr. Haddad Haj-Yahya says, and a growing number, especially this past year, have been borrowing money on the black market, which is run by organized crime rackets. Defaulting on a loan can be fatal. Bystanders also are sometimes getting killed in the crossfire between warring criminal gangs.

All of this is playing out as Arab society is experiencing a breakdown of traditional leadership that once had the authority to mediate feuds, between families or individuals.

Compounding the crisis: Few Arab citizens – just 19%, according to a survey by The Abraham Initiatives – trust the police.

Police say it’s hard to secure the cooperation of Arab citizens who fear becoming targets of crime gangs themselves. Collecting the plethora of illegal weapons that is helping to fuel the violence is also met with resistance on the ground, police say.

Building bridges

Ola Najmi-Yousef, an Arab mother in Nazareth, says crime has gotten so bad there that she has moved her children from bedrooms facing the street, fearing stray bullets.

Ms. Najmi-Yousef directs a program called Safe Communities run by The Abraham Initiatives. Its mission is to build safer Arab neighborhoods as well as trust, in part by strengthening ties and communication between local Arab leadership and state officials, including the police.

Among its initiatives is a financial literacy course for youth, self-defense courses for women, and roundtable discussions between Arab mayors and police officials.

“I see what is going on as parts of a puzzle. It’s not the communities or the police or government alone; everyone has to work together,” she says.

Sireen Jabareen, a university student from Umm el-Fahm, started a regional protest movement with a group of friends in response to the violence. Every Friday for the past six weeks they have staged large demonstrations that have sometimes swelled into the thousands, calling for a muscular crackdown on the violence.

“We just feel unsafe,” she says, explaining that she had witnessed three shootings herself in the past two years.

“Our message to the authorities and the police is simply to do what they need to do to make people feel like they can live safely,” she says. “It’s the most basic thing in the world; really it’s a basic human right.”

Red Cross

A participant from the Gorona del Viento-Red Cross employment program on El Hierro island offers an energy-saving kit to a beneficiary of the project. Each kit contains items that contribute to energy efficiency in the home, such as LED bulbs, power strips, and thermal insulators for doors and windows.

The steep volcanic rock in La Restinga, on the southernmost tip of El Hierro, is covered in green shrubs year-round. On the small farm that Alberto Barroso runs a few miles from his apartment, the sprightly stems of potatoes and onions peek through fresh soil; his hundreds of goats bleat into the clean air. 

Mr. Barroso, born in Argentina, has lived in El Hierro for 16 years. But he’s only dipped his hand in ecological endeavors this past year. After losing his job as a building engineer, he joined a six-month joint program between the Red Cross and Gorona del Viento – the island’s hydroelectric plant – to learn about energy conservation.  

In the program, trainers taught the group of 10 how to reduce the carbon footprint of individual homes through energy saving and efficiency, and how to identify electrical risks. After three months in the classroom, they visited older or isolated residents to help make their homes more eco-friendly.

For Mr. Barroso, the course was an eye-opener on the importance of adopting a greener lifestyle. “I had LED lights before, but since the program, I’ve changed everything in my house to make it more sustainable,” he says. “We need to change our way of life, especially now with the pandemic.”

The project is part of a wider vision to make El Hierro a global leader in renewable energy. Thanks to Gorona del Viento, the island saves over 7,000 tons of diesel fuel and avoids more than 24,000 tons of CO2 emissions each year – with greater savings planned when it incorporates solar energy into the plant by 2050.

For an island of 11,000 inhabitants once completely dependent on outside sources for its energy needs, with an economy held up almost entirely by agriculture and tourism, these environmental initiatives are not just a means of becoming self-sufficient. They’re also a source of pride, as the project gets buy-in from local communities and uses peer-to-peer teaching to create long-term environmental change.

“It’s extremely important to count on society, especially when it comes to environmental projects, because we’re in a moment with the pandemic where we need to change our way of life,” says Káhina Santana, a sociologist at the Universidad de Las Palmas in Gran Canaria, who studies participatory projects related to ecological transition. “It will be hard to advance if only part of society – engineers or other experts – are the ones with the answers.”

“We showed how effective it was”

The volcanic island of El Hierro, the second smallest and the most remote of the Canary Islands, has never been connected to Spain’s power grid. It had relied on imports of thousands of tons of diesel fuel each year in order to power its electricity generators. But in 2014, it inaugurated Gorona del Viento. 

The wind and water turbine farm uses a series of industrial windmills and two reservoirs to maintain the island’s electricity demands. Surplus energy is used to pump water between the reservoirs, and when the winds die down, water collected in the upper reservoir is released to the lower one to generate electricity from the turbines – thus maximizing the uptime of power supplied by renewable energy. Only when the winds are calm and the upper reservoir is empty do diesel generators attached to the power grid kick in to fill the breach.

The technology itself isn’t necessarily innovative, but it’s the first time a system has used wind together with water to supply electricity. In 2020, it covered 42% of the island’s energy needs with renewables and, this past summer, recorded 25 days of using 100% renewable energy.

Jacob Turcotte/Staff

“Wind is the principal factor in this system, but it’s a very changeable energy so we tried to correct it with water, which is stable,” says Tomás Padrón, former head of the Unelco-Endesa electricity company in El Hierro and mastermind of Gorona del Viento. “This combination gives us the stability needed in order to provide enough power to the whole population.” 

El Hierro has a unique topography – it boasts 500 volcanoes, reaches over 4,900 feet in altitude, and is roughly the size of Madison, Wisconsin. But Mr. Padrón, who is also the former president of the island council, says that the technology used at the power farm could be easily transferable to locations that have similar meteorological conditions.  

In the meantime, Gorona has made a huge impact on how residents of El Hierro see renewable energy – starting with Mr. Padrón himself. He’s currently installing solar panels at his home to become more energy self-sufficient. 

“At first, nobody believed in the Gorona project, but then we showed how effective it was,” says Mr. Padrón, who is now retired and spends his free time tending to his garden of nearly three dozen trees in Echedo, in the north of the island. “Little by little, people are installing solar panels or wind energy in their homes to run their appliances. They’re becoming more conscientious about the value of renewable energy for themselves and for the planet.”

Getting locals involved

Renewable energy has been pushed to the forefront of public policy amid the COVID-19 pandemic and ahead of the next United Nations Climate Change Conference, expected to be held November 2021 in Glasgow.

Because the pandemic has disrupted the regular U.N. climate commitment cycle, it has been nearly impossible to account for how well countries have met the goals outlined in the 2015 Paris Agreement: to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in order to keep global warming under 2 degrees Celsius. That’s where the participation of even small communities can play a vital role in reducing overall energy consumption. 

“El Hierro has been the perfect place to conduct experiments because we have so many natural resources and have had problems accessing water in the past,” says Santiago Miguel González, CEO of Gorona del Viento. “Because globally the climate is changing for the worse, and very quickly, we need to continue to implement renewable energies. The only way to reverse climate change is to stop producing harmful toxins into the atmosphere.”

But governments and public institutions can’t do it alone. “The local population needs to do its part in reducing its own energy consumption,” says Armando Rodriguez Betancort, a technical educator for the Red Cross-Gorona del Viento program this past year, “not just to lower individual electricity bills but to contribute to the whole system.”

Santiago Ferrero/Reuters/File

The town of La Frontera is seen in this view on the Canary Island of El Hierro, Sept. 30, 2011. Before the Gorona del Viento plant was launched, all of El Hierro's energy needs were supplied via diesel fuel.

That’s why the six-month program has aimed to make participants into eco-ambassadors, providing them not just with practical skills that will help them on the job market as future auditors or technicians, but to spread their knowledge to island residents. During their visits to 121 homes, the group changed out old light bulbs for LEDs, exchanged older energy-guzzling refrigerators for new models, and rerouted cables to reduce fire risks.

Maribel Narvaez Batista, a former preschool teacher, came to El Hierro with her two children last October from Venezuela. She says she never had to think about the cost of heating her home or how to recycle clothes until joining the program.

But more than anything, it was the home visits that changed her mentality about the ecological transition. “It was so satisfying,” says Ms. Narvaez Batista. “Each family we visited was so happy to learn how [renewable energy] could help them save money and make their lives easier. Some cried and told us, ‘Please come back to visit soon.’”   

In La Restinga, Mr. Barroso says he’s waiting to see if his new ecological ventures pan out before he embarks on a job search. In the meantime, the Red Cross-Gorona del Viento program has given him a lot to think about, in terms of what kind of life he wants to lead. 

“This program was originally intended for people who didn’t have jobs, to teach us new skills,” says Mr. Barroso, “but it really helped me to put things in perspective about how dependent we all are on energy. It totally changed how I live, think, and confront reality.”

Editor's note: The original version misstated how long Mr. Barroso has lived on El Hierro.

There’s a reason Beyoncé is considered music royalty. Queen Bey leads this year’s Grammy nominations with a total of nine. She is the most nominated female artist in the history of the Grammys, and her “Lion King”-inspired visual album “Black Is King” is the main force propelling her to the ceremony on March 14. One of the album’s biggest singles, “Black Parade,” is a contender for record of the year, best R&B performance and song, and song of the year. Other Black artists up for awards include Megan Thee Stallion, Nas, Freddie Gibbs, Doja Cat, Chika, Kaytranada, Brittany Howard, and Michael Kiwanuka. 

Some news outlets noted the Recording Academy included more women and Black artists when the nominees were announced in November. But that progress was quickly overshadowed.

The Weeknd and his highly successful fourth studio album, “After Hours,” was completely shut out – a glaring omission. The album’s biggest single, “Blinding Lights,” was the most streamed song of the year for 2020 on Spotify and became the longest running top 5 and top 10 record on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart. 

Perhaps chart positions shouldn’t be a factor in the nomination process, but it is rare that Billboard’s No. 1 song of the year isn’t nominated in any Grammy category. Industry insiders speculated that he was being penalized for appearing to prioritize his Super Bowl performance on Feb. 7 over the Grammy Awards show, which was originally slated for Jan. 31. After the nominees were revealed, The Weeknd took to social media. “The Grammys remain corrupt. You owe me, my fans and the industry transparency...” he wrote on Twitter. 

His decision to boycott the Grammys – which he announced in a New York Times article this week – only reiterates the distrust many Black artists have toward the Recording Academy as a whole: “Because of the secret committees,” he told the paper, “I will no longer allow my label to submit my music to the Grammys.” 

Other musicians also took issue with the nominations. In January, a group of white artists – Alastair Moock & Friends, The Okee Dokee Brothers, and Dog on Fleas – who were nominated for best children’s music album penned an open letter to the Recording Academy requesting that their names “be removed from final round ballots.” 

They wrote that they couldn’t “in good conscience benefit from a process that has – both this year and historically – so overlooked women, performers of color, and most especially black performers.” The academy subsequently agreed that the category lacked diversity and honored the artists’ request, according to Billboard Magazine. 

The consistent criticism of the academy arises from stats like this one: Only 10 Black artists have won the album of the year award since the first one was handed out in 1959. Grammy voters have yet another chance this year to do right by Black musicians – but will they?

When the cultural zeitgeist trained its sights on racial reckonings last summer, the Grammys weren’t exempt from the heat. In June, the Recording Academy announced changes including renaming the best urban contemporary album category to best progressive R&B album – an apparent rethinking of the word “urban,” which more people in the industry are saying is racially insensitive. 

Earlier in 2020, Harvey Mason Jr., chairman and interim president and CEO, acknowledged in a statement the institution’s shortcomings related to race, foreshadowing some of the year’s efforts: “Too often, our industry and Academy have alienated some of our own artists – in particular, through a lack of diversity that, in many cases, results in a culture that leans towards exclusion rather than inclusion.”

Later, in November, the best world music album category was changed to best global music album to find “a more relevant, modern, and inclusive term,” according to the Recording Academy. Despite implementing diversity initiatives in the past year, including hiring a diversity and inclusion officer, the awards remain dogged by a history that refuses to give Black musicians their due.

It wasn’t until 1989, at the 31st Grammy Awards, that rap was given a category, for example. Artists like Beyoncé, Drake, and Kanye West – despite having crossover success, astronomical album sales, and groundbreaking artistry – are almost always relegated to R&B and rap categories. And legend Aretha Franklin won 18 Grammys throughout her career – but was never nominated in the top four categories. 

Today, we must pay attention to the current state of the institution as well as its origins. It was founded in 1957 – just three years after the start of the civil rights movement – and from its inception awarded white men its highest honors. Fast-forward six decades, and the most prestigious accolade in music has yet another chance to show just how the creativity of Black people fuels and molds the industry – but it probably won’t. There is currency in exclusion and outrage, and so far the Grammy Awards never miss the opportunity to seize it.

Candace McDuffie is the author of the recently released book “50 Rappers Who Changed the World.”

AP

Demonstrators protest the arrest of opposition leader Ousmane Sonko in Dakar, Senegal, March 8.

The people of Niger live in a sweltering sandscape on the southern reaches of the Sahara known as the Sahel. The country is surrounded by neighbors with overlapping Islamist insurgencies. Hundreds of thousands of refugees have streamed across its borders in recent years. Hundreds of thousands of its own people are internally displaced by fighting between extremists and the military. Agriculture, the backbone of its economy, is at risk from climate change.

All of this makes Niger an unlikely indicator for an underlying shift in Africa despite the continent’s many conflicts and anti-democratic leaders.

In the past decade, Niger has been able to maintain robust economic growth, shaving the proportion of the population living in extreme poverty by nearly 10%. Both school enrollment and life expectancy are up. Even more significantly, when results from a presidential runoff election were announced last week, President Mahamadou Issoufou, who has been in power since 2011, accepted defeat and vowed to step down next month.

A peaceful transfer of power would mark a first for a country that has gone through seven constitutions and a military coup since independence from France in 1960. Yet Mr. Issoufou’s concession is no isolated event. A popular hope for more peaceful transfers of power in Africa has taken hold.

In the island nation of Seychelles, for example, President Danny Faure accepted defeat in an election last October, ending 43 years of one-party rule. Three days later he attended his opponent’s inauguration. The incoming president, Wavel Ramkalawan, called Mr. Faure his friend and appointed him an ambassador.

The norm in Africa is still stark. Sixteen countries face sustained armed conflict, according to the Africa Center for Strategic Studies. The latest survey by the watchdog group Freedom House shows 23 of Africa’s 54 nations are “not free,” while another 21 are only “partly free.”

But if Africa’s rulers remain stuck in authoritarian ways, its people are showing more signs of pushing back. A survey done for UNICEF and the African Union last year found an overwhelming majority of young Africans (91%) would like more say in political decisions that shape their lives. Currently 59% say they lack access to policymakers. And in another survey by the Ichikowitz Family Foundation, 86% of young people in 14 African countries say the democratic values of Nelson Mandela are still relevant for them today.

Such sentiments are evident in many African countries. In Senegal and Uganda, opposition supporters have lately launched rolling protest campaigns against presidents who have changed their countries’ constitutions or arrested their political opponents to remain in power. In Tunisia and Ethiopia, fear of political fragmentation has prompted urgent calls for dialogue among rivals.

The decision by Niger’s president to accept defeat has won quick praise. Last week he was awarded a prize for “achievement in African leadership” by the Mo Ibrahim Foundation. Although the award is meant to be given annually, it has been withheld more often than bestowed over the last 15 years for lack of worthy recipients. In announcing the award, former Botswana President Festus Mogae said “a seed has been planted” in Niger. The country’s peaceful transition, he said, “will encourage the population to be more demanding of future leaders.”

More Africans want to claim their moral right to basic freedoms, equality, and rule of law. Despite ongoing instability in Africa, Niger and Seychelles are the latest examples of a public yearning for such ideals. Amid the violence and crackdowns, those voices are being heard.