Death penalty report 2019

A global look at the state of the death penalty in 2019 - its use, legal issues, regional differences, resumed practices, and continued momentum toward abolition.

Amnesty International’s monitoring of the global use of the death penalty in 2019 showed that the number of known executions decreased slightly on the 2018 total, continuing the year-on-year reduction recorded since 2015 and reaching the lowest figure in more than 10 years. Significantly, this decrease was reported despite Iraq nearly doubling its tally and Saudi Arabia having its highest executions total in any given year.

The number of executing countries (20) remained the same as in 2018 and confirmed that the resort to executions remained confined to a minority of states. Major executing countries – including China, Iran, North Korea and Viet Nam – continued to hide the full extent of their use of the death penalty by restricting access to death penalty information.

Positive developments towards abolition were recorded in Barbados, Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Gambia, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Malaysia, the Russian Federation, Tajikistan, the US States of California and New Hampshire, and Zimbabwe during 2019, while threats of setbacks in the Philippines, Sri Lanka and by the US federal authorities did not come to fruition by the end of the year.

Amnesty International opposes the death penalty in all cases without exception, regardless of the nature or the circumstances of the crime; guilt, innocence or other characteristics of the individual; or the method used by the state to carry out the execution.