Capital punishment by country

Capital punishment, also called the death penalty, is the state-sanctioned killing of a person as a punishment for a crime. It has historically been used in almost every part of the world. By the 2020s, many countries had abolished or discontinued the practice. In 2022, the 5 countries that executed the most people were, in descending order, China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the United States.

The 193 United Nations member states and 2 observer states fall into 4 categories based on their use of capital punishment. As of 2024:

• 53 (27%) maintain the death penalty in law and practice.
• 23 (11%) permit its use but have abolished it de facto: per Amnesty International standards, they have not used it for at least 10 years and are believed to have a policy or practice of not carrying out executions.
• 10 (5%) have abolished it for all crimes except those committed under exceptional circumstances (such as during war), most recently Ghana (2023).
• 109 (56%) have completely abolished it, most recently the Central African Republic (2022).

Since 1990, at least 11 countries have executed offenders who were minors (under the age of 18 or 21) at the time the crime was committed, which is a breach of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, ratified by all countries but the United States. These are China, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, South Sudan, Sudan, the United States, and Yemen. In the United States, this ended in 2005 with the Supreme Court case Roper v. Simmons, in Nigeria in 2015 by law, and in Saudi Arabia in 2020 by royal decree.