Which countries still apply the death penalty and which do so more often?

This Thursday, Kenneth Smith – a convicted murderer in the United States – became the first person in the world to be executed by nitrogen gas.

That same day, a man in Japan was sentenced to death by hanging for an arson attack that killed 36 people.

The number of executions is increasing worldwide, even though many countries have abolished the death penalty.

What follows is an overview of the situation of the death penalty in the world.

Countries that still use the death penalty

According to the latest figures from the NGO Amnesty International from 2022, the death penalty was still in force in 55 countries.

Nine of them imposed the sentence only for the most serious crimes, such as multiple murders or war crimes.

23 maintained it, but had not used it for at least ten years.

How many people are executed every year?

Amnesty International’s data is a combination of official figures, media reports and information from death row prisoners, their families and representatives.

In some cases an exact quantification is not possible.

China does not release information about its use of the death penalty.

With the exception of China, Amnesty International registered 883 executions worldwide in 2022.

The figure exceeds the 579 people executed in 2021 by 53% and is the highest on record since 2017.

However, it is much lower than the figures from 1988, 1989 or 2015, when more than 1,500 people were executed in one year.

Amnesty International says at least 2,016 death sentences will have been imposed in 52 countries in 2022.

In 2021, at least 2,052 death sentences were handed down in 56 countries.

Many prisoners spend many years on death row before their execution.

The countries that apply the death penalty the most

Executions were carried out in twenty countries in 2022, two more than the eighteen that took place in 2021.

Amnesty International believes that China uses the death penalty more than any other country. It is estimated that he executes thousands of people a year, but there is no way to confirm this.

Apart from China, the countries that executed the most people were Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United States.

How much has the number of executions changed in each country?

Amnesty International highlights eleven countries that execute people on a recurring basis every year.

These are China, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, the United States, Vietnam and Yemen.

He believes that too North Korea “likely to use the death penalty at a steady pace”but cannot independently verify this.

The number of executions in Saudi Arabia in 2022 was the highest in thirty years.

Five countries: Bahrain, Comoros, Laos, Niger and South Korea have sentenced people to death in 2022, after several years without imposing the maximum sentence.

Instead of, In the United States, the number of executions has declined since its peak in 1999.

How many people have been executed for drug crimes?

Amnesty International says there were 325 executions worldwide in 2022 for drug crimes, including:

By 2023, Singapore executed the first woman in almost twenty years. Saridewi Djaman was convicted of heroin trafficking in 2018.

How many countries have abolished the death penalty?

Currently, the list of countries without the death penalty stands at 112, compared to just 48 in 1991.

By 2022, six countries will have completely or partially abolished the death penalty.

Kazakhstan, Papua New Guinea, Sierra Leone and the Central African Republic have eliminated it completely.

Equatorial Guinea and Zambia announced that they would limit themselves to punishing the most serious crimes.

In April 2023, the Malaysian parliament also voted to abolish the mandatory death penalty for eleven serious crimes, including murder and terrorism.

The Ghanaian parliament approved the complete abolition of the death penalty in July 2023.

How the death penalty is carried out in the world

Saudi Arabia was the only country to include beheading as a form of execution in 2022.

Other methods included hanging, lethal injection, and death by shooting.

In the United States, the state of Alabama executed Kenneth Smith using nitrogen gas.

He was the first person to be executed in this manner. His lawyers described the untested method as “cruel and unusual” punishment and unsuccessfully filed several appeals to stop the execution.

Alabama and two other US states have approved the use of nitrogen as drugs commonly used in lethal injections become harder to find.

The shortage of these drugs has contributed to the decline in the use of the death penalty in the United States. (JO)