Despite increasing executions, the number of countries worldwide that impose the death penalty has decreased.

On 29 May 2024, Amnesty International released its annual report on the state of the death penalty worldwide. Amnesty International’s monitoring shows that in 2023, the lowest number of countries since records began carried out the highest number of known executions in nearly a decade.

Notable progress in 2023:

These figures confirm the trends of recent years that have pointed to an increasing isolation of countries that continue to accept immigration.

Almost three-quarters of the world’s countries have now abolished the death penalty by law or in practice. As of December 31, 2023, the figures were as follows: Abolition of all crimes: 112 Abolition of only common crimes: 9 Abolition in practice: 23 Total number of abolitions by law or in practice: 144 Retention: 55.

In Asia, Malaysia has abolished the mandatory death penalty for all crimes and reduced the scope of this punishment; Pakistan has abolished the death penalty for drug offences; and the Sri Lankan authorities have reiterated their intention to stop executions.

In July, the Ghanaian parliament passed the Criminal and Other Offences Act, 1960 and the Armed Forces Act, 1962 in favour of two laws abolishing the death penalty. In Kenya, four bills abolishing the death penalty were introduced into parliament between August and September. In Zimbabwe, a law abolishing the death penalty in the country was officially passed in December.

Progress for 2024:

Amnesty International recorded 1,153 executions in 2023, an increase of 31% (270) from the 883 known executions in 2022.

The increase in the number of recorded executions is largely due to a worrying increase in the number of drug-related executions in Iran, which is due to the Iranian authorities’ complete disregard for international restrictions on the use of the death penalty.

The known totals do not include the thousands of people believed to have been executed in China, which continued to carry out the most executions worldwide in 2023. For this reason, the global total provided in this report represents a minimum figure that only partially describes the true scale of executions carried out by States during the year.

The number of known executions also increased, especially in the United States: from 18 in 2022 to 24 in 2023.

Although international human rights law prohibits the death penalty for crimes that do not meet the threshold of the “most serious crimes” (crimes involving premeditated killing), at least five countries – China, Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Singapore – have carried out executions for drug-related crimes. The international community has adopted four international treaties providing for the abolition of the death penalty.