Amnesty: 2025 will see the highest number of executions in the last 44 years

A total of 2.707 executions were recorded in 17 countries last year, the most since 1981, according to an annual report on the global use of the death penalty by human rights group Amnesty International, released today. Behind the 78 percent increase compared to 2024, are the Iranian authorities, who executed 2.159 people in 2025, more than double the number a year earlier. Saudi Arabia follows with 356 executions for drug-related crimes. In Kuwait, the number of death sentences almost tripled to 17, in Egypt it almost doubled to 23, and it also increased in Singapore, from 9 to 17, and the United States, from 26 to 47. The 2025 total does not include thousands of executions that Amnesty believes took place in China. The organization's Secretary-General, Agnes Callamard, said the alarming rise in the use of the death penalty was due to a small, isolated group of states that are prepared to carry it out at any cost, regardless of the global trend towards abolition. "From China, Iran, North Korea and Saudi Arabia, to Yemen, Kuwait, Singapore and the United States, this shameless minority is carrying out the death penalty to instill fear, crush dissent and demonstrate the power that state institutions have over vulnerable people and marginalized communities," said Callamard. The report said that almost half of the death sentences carried out were for offences related to the "war on drugs". "It is time for countries that carry out the death penalty to align with the rest of the world and leave this abhorrent practice in the past," said Callamard. The report showed that there were no death sentences or executions in Europe and Central Asia, that the United States was the only country in the Americas to execute people for the 17th consecutive year, that in sub-Saharan Africa executions were limited to Somalia and South Sudan, and that Afghanistan was the only country in South Asia, and Singapore and Vietnam the only countries in Southeast Asia to carry out executions. Amnesty points out that in 1977, when it began its fight against the death penalty, only 16 countries had abolished it; today there are 113. "With human rights under threat around the world, millions of people continue to fight against the death penalty... Complete abolition is possible if we all stand up strongly against the isolated few. We must keep the flame of abolition burning until the world is completely free from the shadow of the gallows," said Calamar.