International efforts to eradicate the death penalty came into sharp focus at the Human Rights Council on Tuesday, where UN human rights chief Volker Türk decried a substantial increase in global executions in the last two years.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/30111516

[…]

The punishment had “no place” in the 21st century, [UN human rights chief Volker] Türk, continued, noting that “the top executing countries over recent years" include Iran, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, and the United States.

[…]

Latest UN data indicates that in 2023, 1,153 executions took place in 16 countries, representing a 31 per cent increase from 2022 and the highest number in the past eight years.

“That followed a 53 per cent increase in executions between 2021 and 2022,” the High Commissioner said, adding that the figures do not take into account China, “where there is a lack of transparent information and statistics on the death penalty. I call on the Chinese authorities to change this policy and join the trend towards abolition.”

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    • Hotznplotzn@lemmy.sdf.orgOP
      3·
      5 days ago

      As the article says, it’s a tragedy an shame for our human race that something like that still exists in the 21st century. According to the 2023 data, the most recent available, the world’s leading executioner is China as per Amnesty.

      Amnesty International record­ed at least 1,153 exe­cu­tions in 16 coun­tries – a 31% increase from the 883 exe­cu­tions in 20 coun­tries in 2022 – mark­ing the high­est total since 2015 but the low­est num­ber of exe­cut­ing coun­tries on record with the orga­ni­za­tion. As in pre­vi­ous years, exe­cu­tion totals do not include the esti­mat­ed thou­sands of exe­cu­tions car­ried out by the world’s lead­ing exe­cu­tion­er, China, where exe­cu­tion data is con­sid­ered a state secret; secre­cy prac­tices and chal­lenges access­ing infor­ma­tion in Afghanistan, North Korea, Palestine, Syria, and Vietnam also cre­at­ed dif­fi­cul­ties in iden­ti­fy­ing min­i­mum totals.