Death Penalty: See list of Countries That Still Execute People
And while Iran toppled the grim table of most recorded executions last year with at least 853 hangings, China is believed to be by far the biggest executioner with Amnesty estimating it executes "thousands" each year in secret.
Here are some key figures about the practise:
The 16 countries that executed prisoners in 2023 was the lowest number on record.
Nearly three-quarters of all countries had abolished capital punishment in law or in practice by the end of 2023.
A total of 112 have abolished it for all crimes, nine others have abolished it for ordinary crimes and a further 23 are considered de-facto abolitionists because they have not executed anyone in a decade.
The only country on the European continent to still apply the death penalty is the former Soviet republic of Belarus, a staunch ally of Russia.
- Iran, Saudi surge -
The 853 executions confirmed by Amnesty in Iran in 2023 represents a nearly 50-per-cent increase over 2022, which itself marked an 83 percent increase over 2021.
While most were hanged for drug-related offences, 38 were put to death for "corruption on earth" - a vaguely-worded charge that has been repeatedly used to convict dissenters since the start of nationwide protests over the mandatory headscarf rule in October 2022.
Iran executed eight men in cases related to those protests but rights groups argue that the surge in hangings on all charges is aimed at instilling fear in the wider population.
Saudi Arabia is notorious for its beheadings, with the kingdom executing 81 people in a single day in 2022.
Executions tripled that year to 196 and they remained at a high level in 2023, with 172 people put to death, mostly for murder or terror offenses, including six women.
The executions, together with the killing of Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October 2018, have undermined the image of a more open, tolerant society promoted by reform-minded Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
- Decline in the US -
There were 24 executions in the United States in 2023, up from 18 in 2022, but well below the peak of 98 executions reached in 1999.
Texas carried out the most executions in 2024 -- eight -- with Florida, which resumed executions after a lengthy pause under Republican governor Ron DeSantis, second with six.
The trend is distinctly abolitionist, with 23 out of 50 states banning capital punishment outright and 14 others halting executions over the past decade or more.
But this year saw a grim first, when convicted murderer Kenneth Smith was put to death in Alabama using nitrogen gas, a method that causes suffocation and which has been likened by the United Nations to "torture".
- Retreat in Africa also -
The only country in sub-Saharan Africa to use the death penalty in 2023 was Somalia, where executions tripled to 38.
Courts in the fragile Horn of Africa nation, which has faced a 17-year insurgency at the hands of the Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Shabaab group and is also battling militants from the Islamic State group, regularly hand down the death sentence for terrorism offences.
Around three-quarters of African countries have either abolished the death penalty in law or in practice.
