21st World Day Against the Death Penalty – The death penalty: An irreversible torture
Observed every 10 October, the World Day Against the Death Penalty unifies the global abolitionist movement and mobilizes civil society, political leaders, lawyers, public opinion and more to support the call for the universal abolition of capital punishment. The day encourages and consolidates the political and general awareness of the worldwide movement against the death penalty.
On 10 October 2023, World Day will continue to reflect on the relationship between the use of the death penalty and torture or other cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment or punishment and build on the momentum started in 2022!
As encountered last year, the types of torture and other ill-treatment experienced when sentenced to death are numerous: physical or psychological torture has been applied to force confessions to capital crimes; the death row phenomenon contributes to the long-term psychological decline of a person’s health; harsh death row living conditions contribute to physical deterioration; and methods of execution that cause exceptional pain. Further discriminations based on sex, gender, poverty, age, sexual orientation, religious and ethnic minority status and others can compound cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of individuals sentenced to death.
While the death penalty is currently tolerated by strict international law standards, and torture is entirely forbidden, it is more and more evident that the death penalty is inherently incompatible with the prohibition of torture.
Scroll down and find more information about torture and the death penalty in our leaflet, detailed factsheet, facts & figures sheet, and more!
THE DEATH PENALTY IN PRACTICE
(Statistics from Amnesty International)
- 112 States have abolished the death penalty for all crimes
- 9 States have abolished the death penalty for common law crimes
- 23 States are abolitionists in practice
- 55 States are retentionists
- The 5 States that executed the most in the world in 2022 are, in order: China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and USA.
- 28,282 individuals are known to be under a sentence of death around the world at the end of 2022, of which less than 5% are women (statistic on women sentenced to death by Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide).