Amnesty International’s annual report on the death penalty reveals a striking contradiction: the number of executions recorded has never been so high since 1981, even though abolition is progressing around the world.
Five years ago, on the occasion of the 40e anniversary of the abolition of the death penalty in France, the former Minister of Justice, Robert Badinter, at the origin of the 1981 law, affirmed his “absolute conviction” that universal abolition – the fight of his life – was inevitable. Capital punishment “does not defend society, it dishonors it,” he said.
This path towards universal abolition is unfortunately still long, as the latest annual report on the death penalty in the world from Amnesty International published yesterday has just shown.
An increase of 78% in one year
The observation drawn up by the organization is brutal. At least 2,707 executions have been recorded worldwide in 2025, an increase of 78% compared to the previous year. This is the highest level recorded since 1981, outside China, whose figures remain classified as a state secret but where Amnesty estimates that thousands of people continue to be executed each year.
This explosion does not, however, reflect a global return to capital punishment. The paradox is even at the heart of the report.
Only 17 countries carried out executions in 2025, while 113 states have now completely abolished the death penalty in their legislation. In other words, abolition is progressing as an international norm, but the countries which continue to implement it do so in a more massive, more assertive and more political manner.
80% of executions in Iran
Iran alone accounts for almost 80% of the executions recorded in the world, with 2,159 executions. Saudi Arabia follows with more than 356 executions. Then come Yemen, the United States, Egypt, Somalia and even Singapore. Amnesty describes a radicalization of the use of capital punishment in several authoritarian regimes which now use execution as a language of power.
In Iran, the death penalty appears more and more as a direct instrument of political repression. According to Amnesty, the Iranian authorities use it to stifle internal protests and project the image of an implacable state in the face of all dissent. The report explicitly links this acceleration of executions to the closure of democratic spaces and the rise of a security power obsessed with social control.
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Saudi Arabia follows a comparable logic. The executions are justified in the name of the fight against terrorism or drug trafficking, but Amnesty sees it above all as a demonstration of authoritarian sovereignty and centralization of power. Same observation for China, which remains, according to the NGO, the leading executing country in the world despite the absence of official data.
The report also highlights the global return of a punitive logic based on the “war on drugs”. Nearly half of the executions recorded in 2025 – 1,257 to be exact – concern offenses linked to narcotics. In Iran, 998 people were executed for this reason; 240 in Saudi Arabia; 15 of the 17 executions recorded in Singapore were also drug-related cases.
For Amnesty International, this development marks a profound break. The death penalty no longer punishes only the most serious crimes but becomes a tool for restoring public order. The organization also denounces the extension of its use to often vague notions: terrorism, national security, espionage or attacks on the state.
The United States again in the top 5 of executioners
The United States occupies a special place in this landscape. The only country on the American continent to continue to execute, they recorded 47 executions in 2025, their highest level since 2009. Florida alone accounts for 19 executions. Amnesty also points to the turning point initiated by Donald Trump since his return to the White House, with the announced expansion of the execution methods authorized at the federal level beyond lethal injection, in particular electrocution, the firing squad or the inhalation of lethal gas.
The report finally emphasizes the persistent violations of international standards: public executions in Afghanistan and Iran, convictions handed down following trials deemed unfair, use of confessions obtained under torture or even executions of people who were minors at the time of the events.
Behind the statistics, Amnesty is actually describing a global ideological clash. On the one hand, a universalist conception of human rights which considers the death penalty to be incompatible with human dignity. On the other, states which claim sovereignist, demonstrative and repressive justice, in which execution becomes a tool of political power.
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