The use of capital punishment experienced a historic decline globally during the year 2025. Amnesty International, in its annual report released this Monday, has recorded the highest number of executions carried out in the world since 1981, with at least 2,707 people executed. The cold figure represents an alarming increase of more than two thirds (78%), compared to the 1,518 deaths recorded in 2024.
This gloomy panorama, detailed in Death sentences and executions 2025 (which you can read in full at the end of this news), reveals how various governments have once again placed this punishment at the center of political discourses based on the “iron fist” and public security as a tool of control and repression. Despite this general rebound, the data also shows a growing isolation of retentionist countries.
Known executions in the past were limited to only 17 countries worldwide, maintaining a trend of historic lows in terms of geographic dispersion. However, the volume of applications in those few territories has raised alarm bells in the international community. Of lime and sand.
The Middle East and North Africa region was by far the main focus of the global rebound, together accounting for 93% of recorded global executions (excluding China).
The notable increase in numbers was led by Iran, which more than doubled its annual total compared to 2024, going from at least 972 executions to a shocking figure of at least 2,159 in 2025. According to the human rights organization’s investigation, Iranian authorities continued to use capital punishment in a punitive and systematic manner to instill fear in the population and stifle political dissent. In particular, the use of the gallows intensified after the 12-day armed conflict that Iran had with Israel and the United States in June 2025.
During the first half of the year (January-June) 654 executions were recorded, while in the period after the hostilities (July-December), the number shot up to 1,505. Under the pretext of safeguarding national security, Iran’s revolutionary courts – characterized by a serious lack of independence and unfair trials – accelerated trials for alleged espionage and collaboration with Tel Aviv. At least 11 men were executed on these specific charges following the June attacks.
Likewise, the repression against those who questioned the regime after the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom uprising continued to claim lives; Two men were executed in connection with the protests after forced confessions were broadcast on television. The death at the hands of the Moral Police of the young Mahsa Amini was at the origin of that uprising. The data expected at the end of 2026 will not be good either, taking into account the protests over the cost of living registered between December and February and the redoubled attacks by Israel and the US since the end of that month.
A woman holds a drawing with the image of Mahsa Amini and the slogan “Woman, Life and Freedom” written in Persian, at a demonstration on the eve of the anniversary of her death in Berlin.
For its part, Saudi Arabia – that partner of the West for whom no one blushes – also shattered its own historical records by carrying out at least 356 executions, surpassing its previous record of 345 set in 2024. The increase in the Saudi kingdom was strongly conditioned by a reactivation of executions for drug crimes and by the application of imprecisely worded anti-terrorist laws.
The latter significantly affected members of the Shiite minority who had supported anti-government demonstrations more than a decade ago, between 2011 and 2013, the report states.
The wall of secrecy: China, North Korea and Vietnam
One of the greatest methodological difficulties documented by Amnesty lies in the opaque handling of judicial information by several governments, especially Asian ones, which implies that the global figures presented are, in reality, absolute minimums. “In many countries, governments do not publish information on their use of the death penalty. In China and Vietnam, information on the use of capital punishment is classified as a state secret,” it is detailed.
AI stopped publishing specific numerical estimates for China in 2009, precisely due to data manipulation by authorities in Beijing. However, the organization emphasizes that the partial data available confirms that the Asian giant continues to be, by far, the largest executioner in the world, sentencing and executing thousands of people each year.
In 2025, the Chinese Government used the death penalty publicly and intentionally to send messages of stability in the face of financial crimes and corruption in the financial sector, for example executing Bai Tianhui, a former executive of the firm China Huarong International Holdings. State secrecy and severe access restrictions also prevented obtaining minimally reliable data in countries such as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and Vietnam.
In the North Korean case, there were also indications of guidelines from its Supreme Court to centralize and supervise judicial execution processes even more strictly.
The excuse of drug trafficking
Another of the most worrying trends of the year under review was the resurgence of extreme punitive approaches against drug trafficking, flagrantly violating the restrictions of international law that limit capital punishment only to “the most serious crimes” (understood exclusively as intentional homicide).
Almost half of all known executions in the world during 2025 (1,257 cases, equivalent to 46%) were carried out for drug-related crimes.
This practice was strictly concentrated in five countries:
- Iran: Recorded 998 executions for drug trafficking, representing 46% of its national total.
- Saudi Arabia: Executed 240 people for this reason (67% of its cases), disproportionately affecting foreign workers (78% of the country’s drug executions).
- Singapore: Recorded 15 executions for drug trafficking, which constituted 88% of its annual executions.
- Kuwait: Carried out two executions on these charges.
- China: Continued massive punishment, intensifying announcements in the run-up to UN International Anti-Drug Day.
Furthermore, articles from countries such as Algeria, Kuwait and the Maldives promoted regulatory reforms aimed at alarmingly expanding the range of drug crimes punishable by mandatory or mandatory death.
La ‘great America’ about trump
In the region of the Americas, the United States remained, for the seventeenth consecutive year, the only country that carried out judicial executions. The national total climbed drastically to reach 47 executions in 2025 (almost doubling the 25 the previous year), registering its highest level since 2009. Far beyond the movies, the reality of administrations that take life.
This national increase was motivated almost entirely by the management of the state of Florida, in the hands of Republicans. Under the administration of Governor Ron DeSantis, the state executed 19 people, the highest annual number recorded in that jurisdiction since 1972, when the US Supreme Court opened a pause in the application of capital punishment at the federal level.
A stretcher for lethal injection, in the OB Ellis Unit, a maximum security area of the prison in Huntsville (Texas), in a file image.
The report highlights that Florida accounted for almost half of the executions in the entire country. At the federal level, the American political landscape was strongly conditioned by the beginning of the second term of President Donald Trump, also Republican and supported by the MAGA (Make America Great Again) movement.
On the same day of his presidential inauguration, the magnate signed executive orders aimed at increasing the use of capital punishment. Attorney General Pam Bondi then lifted the federal moratorium that the Joe Biden administration (Democrat) had previously established, ordering prosecutors to seek the death penalty in all legally possible cases.
Despite inflammatory rhetoric in several states that reformed their protocols to introduce methods such as shooting (South Carolina) or asphyxiation with nitrogen gas (Alabama and Louisiana), the total number of new death sentences handed down in the US fell slightly to 23, reflecting that the long-term historical trend continues downward.
Systematic violations
Amnesty’s monitoring found that multiple states deliberately ignored international protections designed to limit the cruelty of the death penalty. During 2025 the following “flagrant” irregularities were confirmed:
Public executions
At least 17 executions were recorded in public view in Afghanistan (6) and Iran (11). Execution of minors: At least three people were executed in Iran (1) and Saudi Arabia (2) for crimes allegedly committed when they were under 18 years of age. Among them, the cases of young Shiites Jalal Labbad and Abdullah al Derazi in Saudi Arabia were documented, convicted for participating in protests when they were 16 and 17 years old.
Use of torture
Courts in Iran and Saudi Arabia continued to systematically accept self-incriminating confessions obtained under severe physical and psychological torture to issue convictions.
Trials in absentia and special courts
Countries such as Bangladesh handed down death sentences in the absence of the accused, including the proceedings opened by the International Crimes Tribunal against former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
And yet, despite the worrying data on total executions driven by retentionist countries, the global abolitionist movement noted significant milestones that confirm that the general progress towards the eradication of capital punishment remains firm. At the end of 2025, the number of abolitionist countries for all crimes rose to 113, in clear contrast to the scarce 16 that existed in 1977.
In sub-Saharan Africa, executions decreased by 47% compared to the previous year, limited only to Somalia and South Sudan. The Gambia took a historic step by approving the reform of its Criminal Offenses Law and its Criminal Procedure Law, eliminating the death penalty for the crimes of murder and treason. In the same region, Zimbabwe completed a criminal review process that saw the complete commutation of all existing death sentences in the country to alternative prison terms.
In Asia, Vietnamese authorities reduced capital offenses from 18 to 10 in their Penal Code, abolishing this punishment for criminal offenses such as bribery, embezzlement of property and drug transportation. For its part, the Constitutional Court of Kyrgyzstan stopped the executive branch’s initiatives to reintroduce the death penalty, declaring the projects unconstitutional as they directly violated the right to life and the international treaties ratified by the State.
One of the most emblematic cases of individual justice occurred in the state of Alabama (USA), where Governor Kay Ivey granted clemency and commuted Rocky Myers’ sentence. Myers, a black man with an intellectual disability, had spent more than 30 years on death row following a trial plagued by racial irregularities and legal neglect, becoming the first pardon of an African-American prisoner in the state’s modern history.
