According to the human rights organization Amnesty International, there were more executions worldwide last year than in five years. At least 883 executions took place in 20 countries in 2022 – the highest number since 2017, according to the human rights organization’s death penalty report published on Tuesday.
According to the human rights organization Amnesty International, there were more executions worldwide last year than in five years. At least 883 executions took place in 20 countries in 2022 – the highest number since 2017, according to the human rights organization’s death penalty report published on Tuesday.
The increase is therefore mainly due to executions in the Middle East and North Africa region. 90 percent of the executions recorded worldwide took place in just three countries in the region – Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
In Iran alone there were at least 576 executions in 2022. In Saudi Arabia, the number of executions tripled from 65 in 2021 to 196 in 2022. In just one day, 81 people were executed. Egypt recorded 24 executions last year.
“The Iranian leadership is responsible for 65 percent of the executions that have become known worldwide in the past year,” said Julia Duchrow, Deputy Secretary General of Amnesty International in Germany. In the course of the suppression of the protests after the death of the young Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini, at least four people were executed and dozens more face the death penalty.
Among them is German citizen Jamshid Sharmahd, whose death sentence was upheld by the country’s Supreme Court on April 26. The UN assumes that at least 209 people have already been executed in Iran this year, Duchrow said.
According to Amnesty, the highest number of executions take place in China – but they are not officially confirmed by the Chinese authorities. Even if the exact number is not known, Amnesty assumes that thousands of executions are carried out every year – this puts China far ahead of Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the USA. According to the human rights organization, executions in North Korea and Vietnam are also not made public.
Death sentences were also carried out again in Afghanistan, Kuwait, Myanmar, the Gaza Strip and Singapore in 2022 after interruptions. In the US, the number of executions rose from 11 in the previous year to 18 in 2022, according to the report.
However, more and more countries are also abandoning the death penalty. In the past year, six countries have completely or partially abolished it: Kazakhstan, Papua New Guinea, Sierra Leone and the Central African Republic abandoned the death penalty for all crimes, in Equatorial Guinea and Zambia only for common crimes. Liberia and Ghana initiated legal action to abolish the death penalty.
“The world has undoubtedly continued to move further away from the death penalty as a means of punishment in 2022,” said Duchrow. “The countries responsible for the most executions worldwide – China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, North Korea and Vietnam – are now clearly in an isolated minority with their brutal actions.”