A new report pub­lished on the 40th anniver­sary of the United Nation’s cre­ation of the ​‘abo­li­tion­ist de fac­to’ (ADF) cat­e­go­ry, Between Retention and Abolition: Making Sense of a Death Penalty Without Executions, exam­ines the legal, polit­i­cal, and sym­bol­ic role of the death penal­ty in coun­tries that retain the death penal­ty but have either not car­ried out an exe­cu­tion in 10 years or have estab­lished an offi­cial mora­to­ri­um. Authored by researchers at UK-based The Death Penalty Project and The Death Penalty Research Unit at the University of Oxford, this new report seeks to fill the exist­ing knowl­edge gap about ADF sta­tus states, includ­ing exam­ples of prac­tices and rationales. 

ADF states should be praised for the ces­sa­tion of exe­cu­tions, but greater atten­tion must be paid to their active con­tri­bu­tion to the per­sis­tence of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment world­wide. The ADF cat­e­go­ry remains a crit­i­cal but under­stud­ied com­po­nent of the glob­al death penal­ty land­scape. Recognising the com­plex, and often con­tra­dic­to­ry, func­tions of the death penal­ty in these states is essen­tial for abolitionist efforts.

There are 42 ADF sta­tus coun­tries, heav­i­ly con­cen­trat­ed in Africa (20) and the Caribbean (13). Although these coun­tries do not car­ry out exe­cu­tions, they dif­fer in how active their death penal­ty sys­tems are across the board. Some juris­dic­tions con­tin­ue to impose new death sen­tences, with some judges using the death penal­ty to indi­cate the seri­ous­ness of a crime despite know­ing an exe­cu­tion is unlike­ly to be car­ried out. In 2024, at least 263 new death sen­tences were imposed in ADF sta­tus coun­tries. 70% of ADF coun­tries each have a death row pop­u­la­tion of at least 2,850 indi­vid­u­als, many of whom have been impris­oned under harsh con­di­tions for decades, leav­ing last­ing psy­cho­log­i­cal injuries sim­i­lar to those seen on death rows in reten­tion­ist states. The death penal­ty also serves a sym­bol­ic role, used as a tool in polit­i­cal dis­course. For exam­ple, some politi­cians in ADF coun­tries dis­cuss expand­ing the death penal­ty to new offens­es for its sup­posed deter­rent effect, play­ing a key role in their ​“tough on crime” rhetoric. The report pro­pos­es a ​“com­pet­ing log­ics” the­o­ret­i­cal frame­work. For exam­ple, ADF sta­tus might emerge when a nation needs to show domes­ti­cal­ly that they are ​“tough on crime,” while sus­pend­ing exe­cu­tions to avoid international criticism.

Traditionally, ADF sta­tus was seen as an indi­ca­tion of a nation’s progress towards abo­li­tion. However, the report notes that many abo­li­tion­ist states nev­er had ADF sta­tus, that ADF sta­tus coun­tries have at times resumed exe­cu­tions, and that most nations main­tain ADF sta­tus for sev­er­al decades rather than mov­ing towards abo­li­tion. The report explains that addi­tion­al bar­ri­ers to abo­li­tion exist in ADF sta­tus coun­tries: with the lack of exe­cu­tions, the pub­lic is less like­ly to be aware and knowl­edge­able about the death penal­ty, mean­while there is the ​“sym­bol­ic util­i­ty and polit­i­cal con­ve­nience” of reten­tion. The report draws atten­tion to the ​“hid­den human, polit­i­cal and legal effects of retain­ing death penal­ty laws” and cau­tions that ​“time can be the ene­my of progress.” 

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Daniel Cullen, Carolyn Hoyle and Parvais Jabbar, Between Retention and Abolition: Making Sense of a Death Penalty Without Executions, The Death Penalty Project, September 24, 2025;