The number of state executions worldwide has reached its highest level in ten years, a new Amnesty International report said.
More than 1500 recorded executions were held in 2024 with Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, reporting combined 1380 and US for 25, the charity has found.
Despite this rise, the report also establishes that the total number of countries making the death penalty amounts to 15 – the largest number of record for the second consecutive year.
Amnesty International Secretary General Agnes Kalamarard said “the tide turns” to the death penalty, adding that “is only a matter of time until the world is free from the shadow of the gallows.”
Although these figures are the highest, which are from 2015 – when at least 1634 people have been the subject of the death penalty – the real common figure is likely to be higher.
Amnesty International says the figure does not include those killed in China, which believes that it performs thousands of executions every year. North Korea and Vietnam are also not included.
The data on the use of the death penalty is classified as a state secret in both China and Vietnam, which means that the charity is not able to have access to statistics.
Other obstacles, such as restrictive state practices or continuing crises in Gaza and Syria, meant that there is little or no information available for these areas.
The report, entitled death sentences and executions 2024, cited that Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia were responsible for the overall growth of known executions.
Iraq almost tripled its executions from at least 16 to at least 63, while Saudi Arabia doubled its annual amount from 172 to at least 345.
The executions in Iran rose from at least 853 in 2023 to at least 972 in 2024.
The report also states that the two main reasons for the jump in the use of the death penalty are reduced to “countries that arm the death penalty against protesters” and “drug -related crimes”.
The charity found that more than 40% of executions in 2024 were committed for drugs related to drugs, which, in his view, were illegal under the Human Rights Act.
In 2024, Zimbabwe signed a bill that eliminated the death penalty for ordinary crimes, and since September 2024 the world saw two cases where prisoners of death in Japan and the United States were justified and provided respectively.
The charity also said that more than two -thirds of all UN Member States voted in favor of a moratorium on the use of the death penalty last year.