(London) The number of executions has reached its highest level worldwide since 2015, driven by a sharp increase in Iran, Amnesty International said Wednesday in its annual report on the death penalty.
The London-based human rights organization counted 1,153 executions in 2023 – not including China, which does not give its figures –, an increase of more than 30% compared to 2022.
Death sentences handed down increased by 20%, reaching a total of 2,428.
According to Amnesty, the five countries with the most executions in 2023 are China, where they are estimated at several thousand, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and the United States.
Iran alone has executed 853 people, almost 50% more than in 2022.
“The Iranian authorities have shown total disregard for human life,” said Amnesty International Secretary General Agnès Callamard, quoted in a press release.
She noted an increase in executions for drug-related offenses, with a “discriminatory effect” on certain communities, including the Baloch minority.
Despite this increase in 2023, concentrated in particular in the Middle East, “the countries which continue to carry out executions are increasingly isolated”, she underlined.
Their number fell to 16 last year, falling to an unprecedented level. No executions were recorded in Belarus, Japan, Burma or South Sudan, unlike in 2022.
In Asia, Pakistan has repealed the death penalty for drug offenses, while Malaysia has abolished the automatic death penalty for certain crimes.
Conversely, sub-Saharan Africa is among the regions where death sentences have increased, by 66% to 494 in 2023. Executions, all in Somalia, more than tripled to 38.
In the United States, where there have been 24 executions, several states display an “unfailing commitment to the death penalty,” regrets M.me Callamard, who denounces the nitrogen asphyxiation method practiced in Alabama.
The Amnesty report does not count the thousands of suspected executions in China, nor those in North Korea or Vietnam, the organization seeing in the secrecy surrounding these figures a desire to instill “fear”.