Global Death Penalty Report: Executions for Drug Offenses Down 75% Worldwide

Executions for drug offens­es plum­met­ed world­wide dur­ing 2020, accord­ing to a new report by the glob­al drug-pol­i­cy mon­i­tor Harm Reduction International (HRI).

Three coun­tries — China, Saudi Arabia, and Iran — car­ried out 30 con­firmed exe­cu­tions for non-vio­lent drug crimes over the course of the year, the group report­ed in its annu­al analy­sis, The Death Penalty for Drug Offences: Global Overview 2020. The total, the April 7, 2021 report said, was the low­est since HRI began report­ing on exe­cu­tions for drug offens­es in 2007. Drug-relat­ed exe­cu­tions were down 75% from the 116 con­firmed drug exe­cu­tions world­wide in 2019 and have declined by a stag­ger­ing 96% from the 755 con­firmed drug exe­cu­tions in 2015.

HRI attrib­uted some of the decline in exe­cu­tion to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, but said that ​“polit­i­cal devel­op­ments played an impor­tant role.” Drug exe­cu­tions were down from 84 in 2019 to five in 2020 in Saudi Arabia, after the Kingdom pro­claimed a mora­to­ri­um on the prac­tice. The report not­ed what it called a ​“slight” but ​“sig­nif­i­cant … decrease in con­firmed exe­cu­tions in Iran” from 30 in 2019 to 25 in 2020 fol­low­ing leg­isla­tive amend­ments to the nation’s drug laws. For the first time since 2013, HRI said, Singapore did not car­ry out any drug-related executions. 

“It is too ear­ly to defin­i­tive­ly con­clude if this is the begin­ning of a long-term trend, or the out­come of an excep­tion­al year,” the report said. HRI cau­tioned that cumu­la­tive data on the death penal­ty for drug offens­es ​“is gross­ly insuf­fi­cient, part­ly due to a lack of infor­ma­tion on exe­cu­tions in China and Vietnam.” The orga­ni­za­tion con­firmed that drug exe­cu­tions had tak­en place in China in 2020 but not­ed that ​“both [coun­tries] are report­ed to rou­tine­ly exe­cute peo­ple for drug offences.”

While exe­cu­tions for drug offens­es dra­mat­i­cal­ly declined, HRI report­ed that death sen­tences imposed world­wide for non-vio­lent drug crimes and the num­ber of pris­on­ers on death rows world­wide for drug offens­es both rose in 2020. Thirty-five coun­tries still autho­rize the death-penal­ty for drug offens­es and ten imposed death sen­tences under those laws. HRI con­firmed the impo­si­tion of at least 213 new death sen­tences for drug offens­es in 2020, a 16% increase. At least 3,000 peo­ple are cur­rent­ly on death rows world­wide for drug offens­es, HRI said.

HRI Executive Director Naomi Burke-Shyne called the con­tin­ued use of the death penal­ty for drug offens­es ​“amidst a glob­al pan­dem­ic … abhor­rent and emblem­at­ic of an over­ly puni­tive approach to drug con­trol.” ​“Too many coun­tries remain reluc­tant to move away from cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and their false belief that the death penal­ty deters drug offences,” she said.

Pointing to China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Vietnam, HRI sharply crit­i­cized the use of secre­cy to con­ceal infor­ma­tion about the extent to which ​“high appli­ca­tion” coun­tries were employ­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment for drug offens­es. ​“It is essen­tial to note that there remains a per­va­sive and sys­temic lack of trans­paren­cy around the death penal­ty, which is in vio­la­tion of clear inter­na­tion­al stan­dards,” the report said. That prob­lem ​“was exac­er­bat­ed in 2020,” HRI said, when the pan­dem­ic, restric­tions on trav­el, and ​“the shrink­ing of civ­il soci­ety space” com­bined to make the col­lec­tion of infor­ma­tion and inde­pen­dent mon­i­tor­ing of death-penal­ty prac­tices ​“even more chal­leng­ing than in previous years.” 

The report also not­ed wide­spread fair tri­al abus­es as coun­tries denied defen­dants con­fi­den­tial com­mu­ni­ca­tions with lawyers and in-per­son tri­als dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. Lacking the infra­struc­ture for vir­tu­al meet­ings, some defen­dants held in Indonesian deten­tion cen­ters had to speak with their lawyers in the pres­ence of prison guards using the guards’ per­son­al cell­phones. At least 17 defen­dants in Indonesia and one in Singapore were sen­tenced to death in tri­als con­duct­ed over Zoom or oth­er vir­tu­al plat­forms. “[A]dministering the death penal­ty requires a com­pli­cat­ed, com­plex and (to a degree) expen­sive machin­ery,” the report said. The ​“already prob­lem­at­ic func­tion­ing” of cap­i­tal drug tri­als, the report con­clud­ed, ​“was fur­ther chal­lenged by the pandemic.”

Harm Reduction International is an inter­na­tion­al non-gov­ern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tion engaged in research and advo­ca­cy on the health, social, and legal effects of drug use and drug pol­i­cy. It holds Special Consultative Status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations.