Amnesty International Report: Confirmed Executions and Death Sentences Continue Global Decline, But Secrecy Hinders Accurate Assessment of Trends

Executions across the globe fell 5% world­wide in 2019 to the fewest in more than a decade, despite a record num­ber of exe­cu­tions in Saudi Arabia, Amnesty International report­ed in the human rights organization’s Global Report: Death Sentences and Executions in 2019.

The Amnesty report, released April 21, 2020, detailed ris­ing polit­i­cal abuse of the death penal­ty in the Middle East, but said the region’s increased exe­cu­tions were off­set by declines in exe­cu­tions in the Asia-Pacific region and else­where in the world. Amnesty said that in the coun­tries for which it was able to obtain reli­able data, nations car­ried out at least 657 exe­cu­tions in 2019, down from the already decade-low num­ber of at least 690 record­ed in 2018. The num­ber of con­firmed exe­cu­tions in 2019, the report said, was ​“one of the low­est fig­ures that Amnesty International has record­ed in any giv­en year since it began its mon­i­tor­ing of the use of the death penal­ty in 1979.” However, the human rights orga­ni­za­tion said that efforts by coun­tries to hide the extent of their death penal­ty usage con­found­ed its abil­i­ty to assess the sig­nif­i­cance of the decline.

As in pre­vi­ous years, the exe­cu­tion total does not include the esti­mat­ed thou­sands of exe­cu­tions car­ried out in China, which treats data on the death penal­ty as a state secret. China is thought to have car­ried out more exe­cu­tions in 2019 than the rest of the world com­bined. Excluding China, 86% of all report­ed exe­cu­tions were con­cen­trat­ed in just four Middle Eastern coun­tries — Iran (251+), Saudi Arabia (184), Iraq (100+), and Egypt (32+). The 22 exe­cu­tions in the U.S. were the sixth most of any nation, although Vietnam’s and North Korea’s exe­cu­tion totals are not known.

Amnesty record­ed at least 2,307 death sen­tences in 56 coun­tries in 2019, a 9% decline from the 2,531 report­ed in 2018. However, Amnesty believes that num­ber is arti­fi­cial­ly low as a result of the unavail­abil­i­ty of reli­able infor­ma­tion from Malaysia, Nigeria and Sri Lanka, three nations that had report­ed sig­nif­i­cant num­bers of death sen­tences in pre­vi­ous years. Five coun­tries are con­firmed to have imposed more than 100 death sen­tences in 2019: Pakistan (632+), Egypt (435+), Bangladesh (220+), India (102), Zambia (101). The U.S. ranked 12^th, with 35 new death sen­tences imposed. Because of state secre­cy, Amnesty was also unable to obtain infor­ma­tion on new death sen­tences imposed in China, Iran, North Korea, and Syria.

In a web post­ing accom­pa­ny­ing the release of the report, Clare Algar, Amnesty International’s Senior Director for Research, Advocacy and Policy, cred­it­ed the con­tin­u­ing world­wide decline in exe­cu­tions to the recog­ni­tion by “[a] large major­i­ty of coun­tries” that “[t]he death penal­ty is an abhor­rent and inhu­man pun­ish­ment; and there is no cred­i­ble evi­dence that it deters crime more than pris­ons terms.” Against this trend, Algar said, ​“a small num­ber of coun­tries … increas­ing­ly resort[ed] to executions.” 

Saudi Arabia behead­ed 184 peo­ple in 2019, up from 149 in 2018 and the most since Amnesty began track­ing exe­cu­tions in the coun­try. Executions in Iraq increased from at least 52 in 2018 to at least 100 in 2019. 

Algar char­ac­ter­ized Saudi Arabia’s ​“grow­ing use of the death penal­ty, includ­ing as a weapon against polit­i­cal dis­si­dents,” as ​“an alarm­ing devel­op­ment.” The report not­ed that more than half of those exe­cut­ed were for­eign nation­als. Amnesty doc­u­ment­ed numer­ous human rights abus­es in Saudi Arabia’s use of the death penal­ty, includ­ing its use to pun­ish non-vio­lent drug offens­es, its increased use as a polit­i­cal weapon against Shi’a Muslim dis­si­dents, the use of con­fes­sions obtained through tor­ture, and the exe­cu­tion of pris­on­ers for alleged offens­es when they were juveniles.

Algar described ​“the mas­sive jump in exe­cu­tions in Iraq” as ​“shock­ing.”

By com­par­i­son, the report said exe­cu­tions in Iran ​“remained at an his­tor­i­cal low” as a result of amend­ments in 2017 that reduced the num­ber of drug-relat­ed offens­es to which the death penal­ty applied. Amnesty report­ed that Iran had at least 251 exe­cu­tions in 2019, rough­ly on par with the at least 253 car­ried out in 2018, but less than half the num­ber record­ed in 2017. 

Amnesty also assailed the lack of trans­paren­cy in many nations’ exe­cu­tion prac­tices. ​“Even coun­tries that are the strongest pro­po­nents of the death penal­ty strug­gle to jus­ti­fy its use, and opt for secre­cy,” Algar said. ​“Many of them take pains to hide how they use the death penal­ty, know­ing it will not stand up to international scrutiny.” 

The report said state secre­cy ​“hin­dered Amnesty International’s full assess­ment of the glob­al use of the death penal­ty. Major exe­cut­ing coun­tries … con­tin­ued to hide the full extent of their use of the death penal­ty by restrict­ing access to death penal­ty-relat­ed infor­ma­tion.” Some coun­tries, includ­ing Belarus, Botswana, Iran, and Japan, ​“car­ried out exe­cu­tions with­out announc­ing them in advance or giv­ing advance notices to fam­i­lies or legal rep­re­sen­ta­tives of peo­ple exe­cut­ed,” Amnesty report­ed, and some­times pro­vid­ed no advance notice to the prisoners themselves.

Amnesty report­ed that at least 26,604 peo­ple were known to be on death rows around the world at the end of 2019, 38% more than the 19,336 peo­ple known to have been on glob­al death rows at the end of 2018. With known death sen­tences down, the increase more like­ly reflects bet­ter infor­ma­tion gath­er­ing, rather than a surge in the death-row population.

Amnesty International oppos­es the death penal­ty in all cir­cum­stances and, the report says, ​“cam­paigns for total abo­li­tion of capital punishment.”