ABOUT

The Death Penalty

QUESTION

“We don’t have the death penalty in Australia. Why is the death penalty relevant?”

One practical answer to this question is that Australians like to travel overseas. Like all human beings, Australians can make poor choices, including when they are abroad. While the death penalty exists, so does the chance — albeit small — that an Australian person could be put in harm’s way and come face-to-face with the death penalty.

But it’s much more than this: while the death penalty is being exercised against anyone in the world, it is an affront to us as human beings. While people are dying from capital punishment and state-sanctioned killing, the death penalty is relevant to all of us.

From Amnesty International Global Report:
Death Sentences and Executions 2021

Facts and figures

Amnesty International recorded 579 executions in 18 countries in 2021, an increase of 20% from the 483 recorded in 2020. Most known executions took place in China, Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Syria – in that order.

China remained the world’s leading executioner – but the true extent of its use of the death penalty is unknown as this data is classified as a state secret; the global figures for executions and death sentences therefore exclude the thousands of people that Amnesty International believes to have been sentenced to death and executed in China.

 

Credit: Death Sentences and Executions 2021: Amnesty International

More than two thirds of the countries in the world have now abolished the death penalty in law or practice. As of 31 December 2021 the numbers were as follows: 

Abolitionist for all crimes: 108
Abolitionist for ordinary crimes only: 8
Abolitionist in practice: 28 
Total abolitionist in law or practice: 144 
Retentionist: 55 

 

Retentionist list of countries

Countries that retain the death penalty for ordinary crimes: 

Afghanistan, Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belize, Botswana, China, Comoros, Cuba, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Dominica, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, Gambia, Guyana, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Lesotho, Libya, Malaysia, Nigeria, North Korea (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea), Oman, Pakistan, Palestine (State of), Qatar, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Taiwan, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago, Uganda, United Arab Emirates, USA, Viet Nam, Yemen, Zimbabwe.