Amnesty International 2018 Global Report: Executions Worldwide Fall to Lowest Level in a Decade

Executions world­wide have fall­en to their low­est lev­els in a decade, accord­ing to a new report released April 9, 2019 by Amnesty International.

In its annu­al Global Report: Death Sentences and Executions 2018, the human rights orga­ni­za­tion says it record­ed at least 690 exe­cu­tions in 20 coun­tries in 2018, a 31% decline from the 993 exe­cu­tions it record­ed in 23 nations in 2017 and 58% below the 1,634 report­ed exe­cu­tions in 2015. Five coun­tries account­ed for 84% of all record­ed exe­cu­tions — Iran (253), Saudi Arabia (148), Vietnam (85), Iraq (52) and Egypt (43). Nonetheless, exe­cu­tions in Iran fell by half in 2018, as the coun­try revised its death-penal­ty law to bar cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment for some drug offens­es. Data was unavail­able for exe­cu­tions in China — where Amnesty says thou­sands of undoc­u­ment­ed exe­cu­tions like­ly took place — and North Korea, two coun­tries in which infor­ma­tion on death sen­tences and exe­cu­tions is con­sid­ered a state secret. The 25 exe­cu­tions in the U.S. were the sev­enth most of any nation.

Amnesty International’s Secretary General Kumi Naidoo called the glob­al decline in exe­cu­tions ​“dra­mat­ic” and said it ​“proves that even the most unlike­ly coun­tries are start­ing to change their ways and real­ize the death penal­ty is not the answer.” Although Thailand car­ried out its first exe­cu­tion in near­ly a decade and Japan, Singapore, and South Sudan report­ed their high­est exe­cu­tion lev­els in years, Naidoo said these ​“regres­sive steps” were coun­tered by the sig­nif­i­cant reduc­tion in exe­cu­tions ​“car­ried out by sev­er­al of the worst perpetrators.”

The report found that glob­al death-sen­tenc­ing lev­els in 2018 were sim­i­lar to those in 2017. Amnesty record­ed at least 2,531 death sen­tences in 54 coun­tries last year, down 2% from the 2,591 report­ed in 2017. However, death sen­tences were down 19% from the report­ed 3,117 death sen­tences imposed in 55 coun­tries in 2016. The U.S. ranked 12^th in death sen­tences known to have been imposed. Amnesty report­ed that at least 19,336 peo­ple were known to be on death rows around the world at the end of 2018, a 12% decline from the 21,919 peo­ple known to be on death row glob­al­ly at the end of 2017. Only two nations in the Western hemi­sphere — the United States and Guyana — imposed any death sen­tences in 2018, the fewest to do so since Amnesty began track­ing glob­al death sen­tences in 1979. For the tenth con­sec­u­tive year, the U.S. was the only coun­try in the Americas to car­ry out any executions.

Amnesty char­ac­ter­ized the glob­al death penal­ty as ​“firm­ly in decline,” point­ing to Burkina Faso’s abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty for ordi­nary crimes, mora­to­ria on exe­cu­tions declared in the Gambia and in Malaysia, and the Washington state supreme court’s dec­la­ra­tion that the death penal­ty in that state was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. At the end of 2018, Amnesty said, 106 coun­tries had abol­ished the death penal­ty in law for all crimes and 142 had abol­ished it in law or prac­tice. In December, a United Nations General Assembly res­o­lu­tion call­ing for a glob­al mora­to­ri­um on the death penal­ty received the sup­port of a record 121 coun­tries, while only 35 nations opposed the res­o­lu­tion. ​“Slowly but steadi­ly, glob­al con­sen­sus is build­ing towards end­ing the use of the death penal­ty,” Naidoo said, ​“but with more than 19,000 peo­ple still lan­guish­ing on death row world­wide, the strug­gle is far from over.”